Strange restaurants
 

What was the strangest experience you've had in a restaurant? I'm not talking about the food necessarily, but the restaurant itself, its ambience, the staff and stuff like that.<BR><BR>Mine was in a small restaurant in Paris, not too far from the Place d'Italie (about 10-15 mins walk away.) The menu seemed to be pretty normal, as did the staff, and the food was excellent, but what was weird was the toilet. It had obviously started out as a typical French restaurant toilet - one WC in a room the size of a cupboard. What made it strange, though, was the fact it was lit by a green lightbulb, and you were surrounded by mirrors - on all four walls, the floor and the ceiling! It was a very strange experience.....

Another weird restaurant toilet experience: at a Jewish restaurant in the Marais, finding a perfectly peeled orange placed on the lid of the toilet in the ladies.

I would have to say my strangest was a restaurant in rural Mindanao in the Philippines. It was a small roadside building on the main highway right on the ocean. The staff was very pleasant the fish fresh, but as it was an open building, two of the staff members stood by the table waving poles with feathers on the end to keepflies off of us as we were eating.

Many years ago we stayed at a now defunct hotel (Hotel Washington) in Lugano, Switzerland.<BR><BR>To start with, all dishes were placed with the hotel logo facing the person eating.<BR><BR>Towards the end of the meal we noticed all of the hotel guests appeared to fold their napkin and place it inside a cloth envelope at each place setting. I attempted to do the same but it was not easy to make it fit properly.<BR><BR>In general, guests in the dining room appeared to be guests of the hotel. I also think that many if not most stayed for extended periods if not the whole summer season.<BR><BR>Wine bottles served during the meal were kept on a table at the side of the dining room. To identify bottles, each bottle had a cork with the room number on top.<BR><BR>This was pre-internet days. I booked by telephone and sent a deposit by mail. The owner told me that he accepted a one night reservation only because it was the end of the season. He told us to phone the hotel when we arrived at the train station. He pick us up personally.<BR><BR>A few years ago we were in Lugano and asked a taxi driver about the hotel. He said it was located up a hill but was closed for some time.<BR><BR>Over the years I've mentioned the napkin episode to many people but none has ever heard of this.<BR>

The napkin and wine routine is or was not uncommon , even in the US, at residential hotels , where the guests came back from year to year and stayed for extended periods. even in some country house hotel dining rooms in England, your wine can be set aside for the next night, especially if perhaps you've ordered a white with your starter and a red for your main..or if you are a single person and half bottles weren't available or more expensive than a full.

in Yongshou, China there is a restaurant with a sign that has a black dragon on it and reads &quot;We have no opium or heroin... We have freshly made coffee, tastey shakes, Iced lemon tea...&quot;

We went to a restaurant in London 3 or 4 years ago called Lipstick Divas..or maybe just called Divas. The waitstaff were all drag queens. No stuffy wait uniforms for them, they wore evening gowns...I felt like I was being served by contestants in the Miss Universe Pageant...albeit unusually tall with deeper voices and an Adam's Apple.

I'd say mine would have to be at Karasjok, Norway, above the Arctic Circle. There was a sort of touristy reproduction of a Sami (Laplander) hut, sod covered huts buried in the ground. There was an open fire in the middle and the smoke (most of it) went up through a hole in the roof. Everyone sits at rustic benches at rustic little stool tables. We ate reindeer tongue, heart, and smoked salmon as appetizers, then reindeer filet for main course. We guessed that the red &quot;wine&quot; was really reindeer blood -- only kidding. Musicians played while we ate in the almost dark room, lit only by the fire.

Topping, this could be interesting!