Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar is a surreal experience. It's a tiki-themed bar in the Fairmont San Francisco hotel which has a huge lagoon in the middle, periodic tropical rain storms with thunder and lightning, and extravagant décor. The Island Groove Band bang out hits from a thatch-covered barge, while the dance floor rocks and guests feast on Polynesian-fusion cuisine.
The laundrette-meets-diner Harvey Washbangers has found the solution to time-efficient laundering. Head to their restaurant, load up a washing machine then order a craft beer at the bar. If you're hungry, the place serves chorizo burgers, Cajun burgers and jalapeño cream-cheese burgers. No need to worry about your clothes – a light system at the bar will notify you when your washing is done.
Deep beneath Bube’s Brewery lies Catacombs, a stone-lined vault, 43 feet (13m) below street level. Your booking includes a historic tour of the brewery on your way down to dinner, where you’ll be offered a selection of house-brewed beverages to complement mains such as chicken piccata and a crab-cake dinner. Book onto a late-night ghost tour following dessert if you dare.
Step back in time at the dimly lit Bors Hede Inne, where guests, also known as noble travellers, will be greeted by the innkeeper and treated to a 14th-century-style banquet of authentic medieval dishes. Feast on fenberry pye (pork, chicken and cranberry pie), bourblier de sangle (roast pork), sanc dragon (cinnamon and almond chicken) and blamanger (similar to blancmange). Set in Camlann Medieval Village, it’s a dinner-theatre experience and is equal parts educational and relaxing.
As the name suggests, avocados take centre stage at this laid-back spot. Get colourful avocado, banana and mango bowls, burgers with avocado buns and, of course, the original avocado dish – avo on toast – at their Amsterdam or Brussels outposts. Everything on the menu includes avocado in some way or another, and uses sustainable, responsibly-sourced fruit.
Fancy dining under the sea? You can at M6m in the OZEN by Atmosphere resort in the Maldives. Decked out in plush furnishings, the fine-dining restaurant serves a five-course meal of crab, prawns, scallops, lobster and a chocolate dessert, with diners shoulder to shoulder with fish, sharks and stingrays.
If you don't have a head for heights, you might want to avoid this restaurant. Diners are strapped to a table which is attached to a crane, elevated around 100 feet (30.5m) – not a dining experience for the faint-hearted. Originating in Belgium, this sky-high restaurant has been rolled out everywhere from Australia to Africa, with guest chefs devising different menus.
This restaurant in Russia takes rustic dining to the next level as patrons find themselves feasting on traditional Ukranian cuisine beside a farm. A large glass atrium sits in the middle of the restaurant and houses a real cattle yard, complete with a cow, rabbit and milkmaid who tends to the animals. It's one of Moscow’s most popular places to eat and standout dishes include vareniki (boiled dumplings), borscht (beetroot soup) and a lard platter with five types of cured fat.
Some say that aesthetics is as important as taste when it comes to enjoying a dish, but Dans Le Noir takes away the sense of sight. In 10 locations worldwide including Melbourne, London and St Petersburg, diners are served by waiters who are blind or visually impaired, and eat in complete darkness, relying on their other senses to navigate through the meal. We can’t tell you much about the food as all the dishes are a surprise – but guests can choose from a meat, fish or vegetarian menu.
With strobe lights, pulsating music and bikini-clad women staging battles with robots, this Tokyo basement restaurant is like something from outer space. Each night the crew of entertainers perform five 90-minute shows costing 8,000 Yen ($72; £56) per person. While food isn’t included in the ticket price, there are affordable bento boxes. Photographs don’t quite do this place justice.
Cat lovers rejoice – this café is for you. The first of its kind in Australia, the Cat Café’s is home to furry residents, all from rescue shelters and waiting to be cuddled. Entry costs 12AUD per hour (£6.50/$8) and the spot offers a range of cakes and coffees. While the menu might be short, the furry felines are the main attraction. Best of all, if you really like a cat, you can adopt it. If Australia is too far for you to travel, there are similar versions in the UK, France, Taiwan and Germany.
A café that will take you back to your childhood, Cereal Killer Café is run by twins Alan and Gary Keery and serves more than 120 cereals, 30 milk varieties and 20 amazing toppings – think sprinkles and chocolate sauce. Now in London's Camden Market and Brick Lane, and Dubai, the cafés are decked out in 1990s memorabilia with old TV sets playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and band posters lining the walls. There are even single beds and bus seats in place of tables and chairs.
At Modern Toilet in Taipei, diners sit on toilet-shaped seats and eat at glass-covered baths. Drinks are served in glasses shaped like urinals and the meals, including hot pots and curries, are served in miniature plastic toilet bowls. You might baulk at this horrifying alternative dining experience but the concept has been so popular that since the first Modern Toilet opened in 2004, two more have popped up across Taiwan.
Carved out of limestone rocks and overlooking the Adriatic Sea, Ristorante Grotta Palazzese feels like something out of a fairy tale. Steeped in history – it supposedly held banquets for local nobles as far back as the 1700s – the cave restaurant is open between May and October so you can enjoy that warm summer breeze. The menu changes with the seasons but expect the usual Italian dishes, like seafood and pasta, done beautifully.
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When it comes to burgers, calorie count and the customers at this Las Vegas restaurant, the bigger the better. Patrons weighing 350 pounds or more eat for free in the hospital-themed dining room, where waitresses dress as nurses and drinks are served via an IV. It’s famous for its Octuple Bypass Burger with 40 slices of bacon. At 19,900 calories, it's the most calorific burger in the world. Eat at your peril.
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For a thrill-seeking dining experience, head to Rollercoaster Restaurant with locations in Hamburg, Vienna, Abu Dhabi, the UK's Alton Towers and more. Customers place orders on tablet computers, then kick back and wait for their meal to be delivered via a roller coaster-style conveyor belt. The menus include crowd-pleasers like roast chicken with fries and slaw, pasta carbonara and cheeseburgers.
If you like being waited on hand and foot, you’ll love @home Cafe, a Tokyo role-play café. It’s one of many in Japan where patrons are assigned their own waitress – complete with maid’s attire – who serves food with a smile, sings songs and play games. On the menu is Japanese curry, ramen, hot dogs and a toy poodle cake, plus plenty of hot, iced and alcoholic drinks. There’s a 700 Yen ($6.50/£5.20) admission fee and guests are required to spend at least an additional 570 Yen ($5.30; £4.25) on food and drink.
Chill out in this icy wonderland in Dubai, the first of its kind in the Middle East. For 80AED ($22; £17.45), guests can relax on chairs made of ice in temperatures of -6°C (21°F). But don’t worry, on arrival you’re given a hooded parka and woollen gloves, shoes and socks, and spend a few minutes in a buffer zone to help you acclimatise. The menu consists of sandwiches, soups and, of course, hot chocolate.
For a truly refreshing dining experience, look no further than the Waterfall Restaurant in the Villa Escudero resort in the Philippines. Located right next to the man-made Labasin Falls, guests are seated at long bamboo tables where they’ll dine on a kamayan-style Filipino buffet of fish, rice, barbecue chicken and bananas. To eat kamayan-style is to eat with your hands. Best leave your shoes at home for this visit too.
On arrival to this underground NYC spot, guests are guided through a secret path to the dining room which resembles an old-fashioned village. Watch out for the ninjas who are poised to jump out just as you’re about to take a bite of your sushi. They’ll also jump through walls and perform magic tricks at your table.
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What makes this restaurant special is its unique cooking method. Doing away with a traditional hob, the chefs at El Diablo barbecue meat and fish to perfection using the heat of a volcano. A giant grill has been laid across an opening where, just six feet below, lava bubbles at 400°C (752°F). If you’re worried about any underground rumblings interrupting your dinner, don’t be – the dormant volcano has been peacefully gurgling below the surface since its last eruption way back in 1824.
What makes this Parisian eatery unique is the way it serves its wine. In an effort to avoid a French tax on wine served in proper glasses, guests can knock back fine burgundy from a baby’s bottle. It might evoke childhood memories, but this cheese and meat fondue restaurant is strictly adults only.
If history is your thing, take a trip to Kenya and rewind a couple of hundred centuries in Ali Barbour’s Cave Restaurant. The magical location is situated 22 miles (35km) south of Mombasa, hidden inside a coral cave thought to be up to 180,000 years old. The natural holes in the cave ceiling mean you can dine on the locally sourced food, such as fresh Kilifi oysters and grilled barracuda, under the stars.
Dine with the fish under the sea at this quirky restaurant. Located at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort, Ithaa sits 16 feet (5m) below the sea's surface and gives guests panoramic ocean views – think scuba diving for the rich, without getting wet. The adults-only dinner is a set seven-course meal that includes such dishes as lobster and snow crab with dill, mango gel and pickled baby corn, and three-mustard-marinated Wagyu beef tenderloin.
When you visit The Yurt at Solitude, trekking half a mile into the forest through heavy snow is first on the agenda. You'll be kitted out with snowshoes and helped down the moon and lantern-lit path by your host. The warmth of a Mongolian yurt and treats like pork loin with blue-cheese potato gratin, seared scallops, caramelised onion tarts and molten chocolate cake await your arrival.
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Climb aboard this 1950s Boeing KC-97 for an aviation and history-rich dining experience. Enjoy a honey mustard chicken burger, slow-roasted barbecue ribs or a fish platter while marvelling at the hundreds of pictures, memorabilia and rare artefacts on display.
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