Fancy hunting for your dinner in a forest, or eating at Twin Peaks’ Double R Diner? Immersive dining’s mix of theatre and innovative cooking could be for you
In east London, a sniffy butler is welcoming 12 diners into the 16th century. “Ah, Lord Norrington! Greetings!”, he proclaims to a giggling woman in a floral dress. “Sunglasses indoors, my lady? It works for you,” he smiles at a leather-jacket-clad attendee, before rolling his eyes and harrumphing: “It doesn’t seem stupid at all.” Around him are dangling lace curtains, pictures of dead Elizabethans and a vase of roses complete with dry ice that submerges the table in a rolling fog. “Dinner is served!” he announces. At which point, a haughty aristocrat leaps out and startles the diners half to death.
This is immersive dining – specifically, a project called Chambers of Flavours, by theatre-cum-cookery crew Gingerline. Over the past eight months, they have fed about 17,000 guests – sometimes on a gondola, sometimes shoving them into a gigantic machine that looks like something from 80s kids’ TV programme Bertha. In this instance, they are taking them on a tour of theatrical sets (or “parallel dimensions”), where actors serve up a different themed course in each room.
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