Category:
Restaurants

Lion in Freezer

A UK health inspector recently reported finding the body of a dead lion in a restaurant's freezer during an inspection. The frozen animal was lying next to the food to be served to customers. The restaurant owner insisted he wasn't planning on serving the lion to customers. Instead, he was going to feed the meat to his dogs. He had received the lion from a nearby zoo. [mirror.co.uk]

Posted By: Alex - Tue Sep 16, 2014 - Comments (11)
Category: Food, Restaurants

Bite The Hand That Eats You

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A chef was killed by a bite from the disembodied head of an Indonesian spitting cobra. He had decapitated it 20 minutes earlier in preparation of a local dish. They say not to bite the hand that feeds you, the hand that eats you is another thing apparently.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 24, 2014 - Comments (3)
Category: Death, Freaks, Oddities, Quirks of Nature, Restaurants, Screwups, Goofs and Screw-ups

Waitress There’s A Cockroach In My Salad


When a customer in a Chinese restaurant complained about a cockroach in his salad the waitress showed him it was safe to eat by eating it. Delightful!

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jul 16, 2014 - Comments (6)
Category: Insects and Spiders, Restaurants

Hangman’s Tree Cafe


An article from the Reading Eagle (Oct 27, 1954) explains what this place was:

Jim Long, our Hollywood correspondent, has visited another unusual restaurant. This one was Hangman's Tree Cafe, "the rendezvous of those who enjoy lousy food." That isn't Jim's opinion. It says so on the menu which he sent us.

Many of the items on the menu carry special notations, to wit:

Top sirloin steak, $3.15. Not the usual "mule hide" but finest aged beef.

Chicken fry steak, $1.85. Oh, no, it ain't chicken; it's a beat up cow.

Lamb chops, $2.75. Mary lost it, we found it, you can have it.

Chef's salad, $1. Yeah, we know, every restaurant has a chef salad, but they ain't got our chef.

Caeser salad, 80 cents. The chef will hate you for ordering it, but go ahead and gamble.

On top of the wine list is this announcement: "Seasoning for the town's most tasteless food."

These additional notes are carried inside the menu:

"Don't be a glutton. Leave a little on the plate. Remember, all leftovers are used in our Sunday hash."

"Warning! Well done steaks at your own risk."

On the cover it says: "Lousy food. Warm beer and cocktails. Sneering service."

It's a really good place, Jim writes. But, it seems, everyone in California likes humor with their meals. They must have something to laugh at since the smog keeps the citizens rather gloomy.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 28, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Restaurants, 1950s

The iTray

Waitering goes high-tech. Somehow I don't think this will be widely adopted.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jun 10, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Restaurants, Technology

Fine dining in a lavatory

London's Attendant Cafe, which opened last month, has a concept that it hopes will attract the curious. It's situated in a former public lavatory, and instead of trying to play that down, it's playing it up. So none of the old toilet fixtures have been removed. Instead, countertops were installed around them. Patrons can munch on "super gourmet sandwiches, salads, coffee and cakes" while perched in front of a urinal.

The challenge for the restaurant will be to overcome what psychologists call the law of contagion. "Once in contact, always in contact." That is, once an object is associated with something offensive, such as a urinal being associated with urine, it will always maintain that association in our minds, no matter how clean the urinal is. [nydailynews]

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 05, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Food, Hygiene, Body Fluids, Restaurants

Prince Ranjit, King of Curry

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Even in this current age of celebrity chefs, no one has thought to impersonate a foreign Rajah in order to attract publicity for his restaurant, like "Prince Ranjit" did a century ago.

Full story here.

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 07, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Eccentrics, Food, Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators, Restaurants, 1900s, India

New Sandwich Shop

An historic building in the Boston Commons has been repurposed as an Earl of Sandwich sandwich shop. Normally that would not be of great interest, except for the previous use for the building. It was a public restroom in the past and has been padlocked closed and left in disrepair for years. So, is a kitchen in a former public restroom too much of a gross out?

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 03, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Restaurants

Eat the whole animal!

The Globe and Mail has a review of The Feasting Room, a small Toronto restaurant whose motto is "eat the whole animal!" The chef picks a different animal each week and creates a six-course tasting menu from its parts... all its parts. Some of the dishes from pig week included: pig's skin served with a bowl of creamy apple sauce, sweet-pea soup with ribbons of crunchy-chewy pig's ears, pig's spleen layered over pork belly and sage leaves and rolled into a pinwheel, pig's trotter stuffed with pork shoulder, and for dessert pistachio and pig's blood Nanaimo bars.

Shown in the picture is a dish from chicken week: chickens feet with strawberry maple glaze.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jul 20, 2012 - Comments (11)
Category: Food, Restaurants

Big Tree Inn

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Read the bare facts about this charming place here.

I sure wish it was still around.

(Click image for more detail.)

Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 08, 2011 - Comments (2)
Category: Restaurants, 1910s, Natural Wonders

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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