There’s a restaurant in London where everybody dines in the nude
There’s a restaurant in London where everybody dines in the nude
Maybe we’re germophobes (OK, we totally are), but the idea of dining in the nude, at a restaurant full of other naked people, does not sound super appealing.
Today we learned that there are 47,000 people who disagree with us on this front, because that’s the number of folks on the waiting list to have dinner at The Bunyadi, “London’s naked restaurant.” That’s right: at a cost of 69 pounds (about $100) per person, you can strip down and have dinner in your birthday suit. The pop-up restaurant is housed in a secret location and doesn’t utilize heat or electricity — all the food is served raw, and the nude customers eat by candlelight.
The Bunyadi’s purported goal is to desexualize the body, according to the restaurant’s creator, who told Eater, “We need to look at our bodies without sex, we need to be comfortable.” A worthy mission to be sure, but when Eater writer Pelin Keskin dined there, she noticed that the decor and taboo vibe didn’t quite mesh with that goal. Diners are given robes when they enter the restaurant, the space is dimly lit, and tables are enclosed in private bamboo cocoons.
“As we walked to our table through a maze of bamboo, I caught glimpses into other tables and wondered why the organizers claim to normalize nudity when they made it look so… risqué. I understand that the candlelight is meant to be more forgiving to those self-conscious about their bodies, and the privacy of each table is supposed to ease those nervous about de-robing, but the place makes you feel like you’re in Tinkerbell’s harem.”
(Can we pause for a moment here to acknowledge that “Tinkerbell’s Harem” would be an awesome name for a feminist punk band? )
Keskin found the restaurant to be an exercise in white privilege, because “after all, desexualized nudity is something that has existed and exists in tribes and indigenous communities around the world, and colonialism clothed some of this nudity into nonexistence.” And also? The food wasn’t that good.
Still, 47,000 diners and counting agree: the novelty of dining in the nude is worth it. Hey, if this your thing, we’re not going to judge and we are certainly up for trying anything once. Strip down and bon apetit!
The post There’s a restaurant in London where everybody dines in the nude appeared first on HelloGiggles.
