The NYPD Pizzeria in Downtown Orlando is owned by Lou Pearlman, owner of Transcontinental Entertainment, the media company the created and originally marketed the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, 98 Degrees, and O-Town during the boy band explosion of the mid-'90s. The walls are decorated with some police memorabilia (framed collections of badges, for example), but the majority of the decorations are giant promotional posters, framed glossy photos, and lots of autographs of all the boy band members that came out of Orlando. While this would normally make me lose my appetite, they have the best NY-style pizza I’ve had since moving here.
Oh, BiblioCat, Steak and Ale is a chain. We have a few in Florida, including Kendall, where I grew up in suburban Miami. Almost every friend of mine from Miami worked at Steak and Ale at one time or another, either as servers or bartenders–I’ve known dozens of people who “came up” at that restaurant, and often moved to higher positions in better restaurants. I myself have spent countless hours at the bar, usually waiting for someone or other to get off work. The food isn’t bad, but the menu is very “old-fashioned” – meant to appeal more to the “bring your own oxygen” crowd of bar regulars who order Manhattans and early-bird dinner specials. And yes, it is VERY dark and quiet there.
Panama’s most eccentric, and also cheesiest, restaurant is La Cascada, an open-air place on Avenida Balboa next to the waterfront. True to its name, its centerpiece is a large artificial waterfall about 20 feet high - with little multicolored plastic dinosaurs placed strategicallly on the rocks on either side.
Most tables line a long concrete channel that circles through the restaurant. There were formerly large ornamental koi goldfish in the water; now there are just plastic duck decoys floating in it. There are also life-size painted concrete statues of animals scattered around the main room - a camel, a zebra, etc., probably about a dozen in all. There are similar statues of a centaur and a mermaid at the entrance.
The menu is about 30 pages long and has an index. Each item is described in an elaborately detailed paragraph, in both Spanish and a bizarrely fractured English translation. There is a full page on the “La Cascada Philosophy,” plus all sorts of asides. When you are ready to order, you turn on a little red light on your table. The waitress then has to dash over and turn off your light within a minute or so or she gets demerits. Although the food is pretty mediocre, it comes in monstrous portions and is quite cheap for what you get.
At the casino about 45 miles from where I live, there’s a restaurant called “Carousel Buffet.” It’s designed to look like you’re at the state fair. In one area, it looks like you’re on the midway. You can sit in booth seats that look like the tilt-a-whirl. I love it there! Has anyone else ever eaten at one of these? I’ve often wondered if it’s a chain or if it’s unique.
In downtown Salt Lake City is the Rio Grande Cafe. Formerly the Rio Grande RR Depot, now a mexican restaurant.
Hanging from the ceiling in the center of the dining area is a huge taco shell with a female mannequin lying in the bottom of the taco – feet extending out one end and her head with long blond hair dangling down out the other end. The giant taco is circled by a suspended train track with a model train running around.
Also, WOLFIE’s is no more…but it was a classic Jewish deli, in South Beach. The place was straight out of the 1930’s-they had pictures of movie stars on the walls…only the movie stras were from the 30’s as well. The weird thing…they had great breakfasts, but the rest of the food was mediocre. Also, the smallest bathrooms I’ve ver seen.
Used to be a place in Newport, Vermont which was a combination Country-Western bar/Chinese restaraunt. Between the mechanical bull and the paper lanterns…
I’m quite fond of the Rainforest Cafe - the only one I’ve been to is at the mall in Southcenter, but I love it. There are giant tropical fish tanks all over, so the fish are swimming all around you, above you there are tree branches, and a “sky” above that, of dark blue with little fibre-optic lights for stars, there are mechanical animals that move, like elephants, gorillas that beat their chests, and butterflies that slowly open and close their wings. Waterfalls, huge statues, and rainbows all around, and last time we went, we sat next to some kind of rock wall that only came up to our eye level (set up like a normal divider wall between booths in restaurants) and some “rain” rained down into the middle of it, falling on something in the wall that created a gentle mist near us. It was pretty cool. You are surrounded by the sounds of jungle animals, and sometimes “thunderstorms”, where the lights will dim, flicker, and you hear thunder rumbling. Excellent place to take the kids, for certain. Very touristy and a bit pricey, though.
I should mention the Pac-Man Cafe on touristy International Drive in Orlando. It is an entire theme restaurant devoted to Pac-Man. The dining room itself is done in bright blue and yellow, with televisions suspended from the ceiling showing episodes of the old Pac-Man cartoon show from the '80s. The ceiling itself is covered with three-dimensional shapes in either glass or clear plastic or plexiglass that look like jellyfish. Once you enjoy your barbecue bacon cheeseburgers, you can have a drink at the Galaxian-themed bar, or take an elevator upstairs to a giant video arcade with a Tekken-themed bar in the center. In order to go back downstairs, you have to walk through a museum of Pac-Man memorabilia in glass cases, mostly stuff from the '80s. I don’t know if I’d go back to the Pac-Man Cafe, but I guess I’m happy I went once. It’s a bit pricier than your average T.G.I. McScratchy’s sort of restaurant, but maybe a little bit less than the Hard Rock Cafe.
You’re kidding! I know tastes are subjective, but I love all the food at Cracker Barrel. They have the best meatloaf around (including mine and my mom’s), great chicken and dumplings, those kick-ass biscuits they bring to the table, yummy fruit cobblers for dessert… I love the Barrel.
The 101st Airborne Club takes all prizes.
The building is deliberately designed to look like a bombed-out farmhouse from Normandy, France, circa 1944.
They have a Sherman Tank, a ww2 Jeep, & a Commando-Class transport plane, all in Invasion colors.
The walls are covered in photos of WW2 era paratroops, combat pilots, & events of that era.
Interior decor looks like a WW2 period Army HQ, crossed with a fine restaurant & bar.
Music–Catch The A-Train, & other Swing instrumentals are constantly played.
Oh! I forgot one of my favourite haunts - The Purple Cow. It’s more like a little cafe than a restaurant, though. It’s still pretty cool. The inside is painted - you guessed it - a deep purple, with neon green trim. It sounds so gaudy - it* is * gaudy - but it seems to work for this little place. There are cows strewn about all over the place as decoration. Not real ones, of course. Little ceramic cows, a big stuffed purple cow up on the dessert display case, things like that. They always have interesting music playing. The first time I went in there, there was this very peppy, spacey, repetitive sounding instrumental music playing in the backround… like a merry-go-round on Mars. Space Calliope. I felt like I was in a Sam and Max game.
Try the Purple Cow (a frozen yogurt berry purple-y smoothie thing) - it’s delicious, and doesn’t taste like cow at all.
Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse The Canadian bastard son of Outback. It’s not a rusty pitchfork on the wall, it’s a rusty bear trap. There’s a moose head over the bar, and just when you’ve settled in and started to enjoy your meal, the moose talks. The ears move, I swear.
Bartley’s Burgers It’s a student-hangout/burger-joint near Harvard Square. The walls are convered with fringe sociopolitical pictures and posters. A Ronald Reagan magazine ad from the 50’s for Chesterfield cigarettes, this is your brain on drugs/this is your brain with a side of bacon poster, a postcard (photoshopped, I hope) of Bill and Hillary in bondage gear, stuff like that. And the burgers are all named for politicians; the John Kerry comes with genuine Hines ketchup (I’m partial to the Jesse Ventura, myself). It’s sort of like if P.J. O’Rourke’s college dorm room exploded.
In the heyday of the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, I heard about a mad-scientist themed place in New York City, but never went there.
I’ve been there - isn’t it a chain? I went to the one in West Palm Beach, FL. The waitstaff is dressed like field hospital medics, and when you get your bill, it comes in one of those little leather book things that says “Discharge Papers” on the front.
This reminded me of Flying Tigers, placed along side the runway at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Same style of decor with sand bags making up one wall. Outside has the little guard shack with the pivoting arm that would block the driveway, and the tank and trucks all olive drab scattered around.
The neat thing is watching out the double thick windows alongside the runway watching the planes come and go. At the bar there are headphones that you can listen to the pilots and ground control.
Cool looking place, way overpriced and dull average food. Between that and the hard to find entrance they’ve been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for ever.
Minnesota used to have a restaurant called Amalgamated Eating and Drinking Company Underground. You entered the restaurant through a fake mine shaft elevator, and then entered into the dining room, supposedly underground.
I was a young kid when I was taken there, but I was SURE we were dining below ground.
Looks like I’m the third Minnesotan chiming in with an odd restaurant. We sure know how to live up here.
My parents took us to this restaurant back in the late 70s as little kids but for the life of us, none of us can remember the name. It was a grand Victorian house that was converted into a Haunted House restaurant. It was open year 'round too. Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and others would be the waiters/waitresses. When the food came, they came out of a secret passage behind a coffin on the wall. It was spookily decorated with skulls, a big Frankenstein-sized chair, and cobwebs of course. We have a couple pictures from a meal there with my sister and me looking bug-eyed and terrified. I’m sure that was good for digestion.
Apparently it had burned down and they never re-opened.
Yeah, I guess we do know how to live here. Though, apparently, I may have missed Minnesota’s wacky restaurant heyday (I didn’t move here until 1990.) That haunted house sounds really cool.
Anyone ever go to the Odyssey restaurant in the Mall of America? I never did, but that looked like a strange place. Of course, now there’s the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co…apparently, (this is what I’ve seen from walking past it), if you want the server to stop at your table, you flip a sign that says “Run, Forrest, Run” to “Stop, Forrest, Stop!”
Oh, since we’re talking about theme restaurants (I don’t really consider this to be “strange”), I need to mention my favorite McDonald’s in the whole world…the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s in Chicago. It’s across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe. I’d say skip the Hard Rock and go to McDonald’s…it’s covered in old rock ‘n’ roll and 50’s memorablia…James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis…there is an old convertible and statues of the Beatles. And, not only was the decor great, but this is the cleanest, most professionally run McD’s that I have seen in a long time.
