It’s like a hamster cage but for hungry human-sized families. There are big plastic tubes that lead-up from each table and go to a DZ Discovery Zone/Antics-style ‘play area’ that spans the second floor, above the eatery. There’s a ball pit, roller slide, elevated tubes and tube slides, obstacle courses, monkey bars, climbing wall, strap-web ascension and chute, etc. You can romp while you wait for your food, and the waiter presses a button on the table when your food arrives (lighting your table number on an unmissable array of table numbers in the play area). The theme should be “late-nineties fast-food eatery,” so hard plastic booths and saturated colors and etcetera.
The tables are all on a slow moving track, like an omnimover, and you circle/snake around the establishment through a series of scenes and settings, telling a broad story via your panoramic dining experience.
The “Ahh” restaurant: patrons can choose to sit in Ahh seating or Non-Ahh seating, and while Non-Ahh seating resembles Ahh seating it is absolutely plastered with garish, blaring signs that say “LAME” and “UNCOOL” and the like, and the servers in that area do not treat the Non-Ahh patrons with much respect. The Ahh section—which is rather delightful, and the utmost respect is afforded to you—requires that each patron say “ahh” (being, the sound you make when a dentist asks you to ‘open wide’) before taking a bite; any patron in Ahh seating who takes a bite without first saying “ahh” can be accosted by anyone else in Ahh seating, as well as the staff.
Themed around “the feel of a major city at night”, but of no city in particular unless otherwise desired. There are no window on the façade, and there is a three-foot buffer space between the interior and exterior walls—a square within a square—as if the interior space is a movie set and the façade is merely the warehouse containing the movie set. The interior walls do have windows, but they are a frosted glass, given that the buffer space hosts a network of lights and speakers (some on tracks, some fixed in place) simulating streetlights, neon lights, adjacent buildings, park and fountains, cars (moving, idling, slowing or accelerating), passers-by, traffic, etcetera—the somatic liveliness of a bustling city. (The lights and speakers on tracks are primarily for simulating cars driving past, but speakers would also simulate couples and crowds.) Many of the speakers would face into soundproofing material, to replicate distant sounds and the muffling of the exterior noises by the “restaurant” itself (sounds like tires, honking, chatter, running water, and the occasional siren). Looking through the frosted glass windows, the lighting would indicate a dark nighttime illuminated by the dull glow of the urban light pollution with specks and streams of yellow, white, and multicolored stationary and passing lights, as well as indistinguishable neon signage of ‘neighboring establishments’. The interior atmosphere would be sophisticated and warm, and leaning heavily into the vaporwave aesthetic, to capitalize not only on the frosted glass windows but the “nighttime in a city” theme, which all but guarantees the interior design emulate the late-eighties, early-nineties; pleasant and retro but clearly metropolitan. A rich eating experience, the food could be posh pasta and meats, such as tortellini and steak, a la Longhorn meets Olive Garden. All items on the menu should be named after large international cities.
Strictly serves appetizers—potato skins, burger sliders, nachos, chicken fingers, buffalo wings, pigs in a blanket, mini corn dogs, club sandwiches, small salads, chips & dip, hors d'oeuvres, etcetera. The idea is to have food that the whole group can share – an idyllic, simple, and communal outlook about how to eat dinner.
A circular restaurant on top of a skyscraper, and it slowly spins around, so that the patrons can view the city around them with a changing perspective, all while staying seated and shoving food in their faces. Put the kitchen, bathrooms, lobby, and elevators in the center, exempt from the spinning nature of the outer ring. Fancy food and atmosphere.
A shop that makes original ice cream and doughnuts. There’s a specialty of an ice cream sandwich, where the ‘sandwich part’ is a halved donut. Also, the ungodly bastard-children of different kinds of donuts—for example, a chocolate donut with strawberry frosting, a glazed donut with vanilla frosting and caramel drizzle, a strawberry frosted donut with caramel drizzle and filled with vanilla crème and sprinkles, a maple frosted donut with chocolate chips on top, a glazed cake with blueberries and raspberry drizzle, etcetera, etcetera. There would be bastard-children creations of ice cream as well.
A commercial homage to the Adventurer’s Club: a multi-level bar/restaurant themed around the British Colonial explorations of Africa and Southeast Asia, with a central cylindrical atrium, restaurant seating on the tiers overlooking the atrium, and the bottom floor splinters-off spokes of different bars, varying in energy level and niche-indulgent themes. The music would be swing, jazz, ragtime, and novelty songs from the 1900s-1930s, as the vibe isn’t so much “dancing” as it is “togetherness”, like one big party that encourages everyone to mingle, laugh, and revel. It would have its own nightly and weekly traditions, and iconic characters (portrayed by improv artists) who present themselves, interact with patrons, and keep the energy up. Some of the rooms splintering-off from the mezzanines are quieter corners for seclusion (also niche-themed rooms) as well as a back room “library” where nightly performances are held.
Eatertainment locale in "original” Boston, called "Three Hills" in honor of its three-hilled origins. Exterior would polish-up a brownstone façade and lean-into the Roosevelt/Lodge Brahmin era, while the interior would have more of a warm wood vibe (like a sophisticated version of the Cheers bar) but with shuffleboard, bocce, bowling, billiards, board games, nightly trivia, and maybe even laser tag, because what hasn’t been improved with laser tag? I’ll tell ya: nothin’.
Large bar: the ground floor is half sports pub—table seating, large horseshoe bar, TVs, and kitchen—and half games bar—mini bar serving bocce lanes, air hockey, darts, billiards, and an arcade—split by the entryway aisle. This entry leads to stairs, going up and down. Below, the basement is a nonstop dance hall (occasionally styled as a rave) with its darkness accented by rabid colored lights, bumping speakers, and a full bar in the back. Meanwhile, the top floor is a cozy lounge, with chill music, whiskey and cocktails, comfy seating, and a small kitchen; a third of the top floor is an open-air terrace, with strings of incandescent bulbs (obviously—it’s a bar with outdoor seating and a stick up its ass, it has to have strings of faux-incandescent bulbs) and fire pits for relaxing around with chic lawn chairs.
Big horseshoe counter filling most of space (sparse tables line the back walls) with the space inside the horseshoe being the kitchen, open to the eatery. Styled neatly, minimalistic, but comfortably lit dim; cozy, lux. The kitchen is staffed by three or four people, and the only things not visible are the bathrooms, back office, and the inside of the fridge, but the fridge itself is accessible from inside the horseshoe. There is a small menu, with only a single permanent item per theme, with themes being high-class cuisine, southern/home food, Asian/exotic fare, and desserts. The cooking crew are a well-trained team working like cogs in a machine. Can seat maybe twenty people around the horseshoe, and maybe another twenty along the walls. Quality, carefully-assembled food; a constantly changing menu; daily specials depending on the whims of the chefs and their morning purchases.
Brewpub whose bar is shaped like the hub-and-spokes of a wagon wheel, wherein the spokes are tables essentially off-shooting from the central open area (the hub) where the bartenders make drinks. You can then have essentially eleven tables attached to the bar, with the twelfth spoke being the tenders' in/out passage. Presuming every drink wouldn’t be a pint of ale, and thus sliding the drinks down the length of the table would be a bad idea, maybe there is a conveyor belt down the middle of each table, to bring drinks out and empty glasses back.
Reimagining the pirate haven of Tortuga as a rowdy bar, with a loft overlooking the bar below (and, being above the front half, a continuation of the upper floor extends outside over the sidewalk, as a balcony, overlooking the street; and this loft is accessed by stairs on either end of the establishment, on opposite ends of the bar counter); with cleavage-bearing wenches as bartenders; live fiddle and piano music, and sometimes the staff sing sea shanties; serving fish & chips and the like; rum, ale, grog, and ‘pirate cocktails’; the interior is of bare weathered wood, with ropes and nets and barrels decorating the walls and ceiling, and the establishment appears as if it’s cobbled together of driftwood, scrap, and reclaimed objects. Avast ye, scallywags!
Original document created 10/19/2013.