19 of the Strangest Restaurants You Can Actually Eat At

For some travelers, food is not just something you grab between stops. The restaurant itself can be part of the destination, especially when dinner comes with dinosaurs, cliff divers, medieval jousting, or a table suspended high above the ground.

Some of these places are full-blown themed restaurants. Others are dinner shows or restaurants built in locations so unusual that the setting becomes the main attraction. Either way, none of them could be accused of playing it safe.

Want to eat beneath the Indian Ocean, inside a cave, beside a cargo plane, or surrounded by ice in the middle of Dubai? Those are all real options. 24/7 Tempo looked at official restaurant websites and other available sources to find some of the strangest and most memorable dining experiences around the world.

Rainforest Cafe may be one of the better-known themed restaurant chains, but subtle it is not. The dining rooms recreate a tropical rainforest with dense artificial vegetation, waterfalls, aquariums, and animatronic animals. Periodic simulated thunderstorms add flashes of lightning and booming thunder while some of the animals come to life. It is basically dinner inside a very enthusiastic indoor jungle.

If the rainforest is too modern for you, head back a few million years. T-REX Cafe at Disney Springs in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, surrounds diners with prehistoric scenery and larger-than-life dinosaurs. The menu keeps the theme going with names like Colosso Beef Nachos, Prehistoric Pasta, and Bronto Burger. It is part restaurant and part dinosaur attraction, which is probably more excitement than most people expect from a plate of nachos.

"Forrest Gump" arrived in theaters in 1994, and two years later the first Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. opened on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The company says it remains the only casual restaurant chain based on a motion-picture property. Today it has 22 locations in the United States and 16 international locations. Expect plenty of shrimp, movie memorabilia, "Forrest Gump" trivia, and references that will make considerably more sense if you have seen the film.

Calling Medieval Times a restaurant almost undersells what is happening. Dinner is served while knights compete in a live tournament featuring horsemanship, sword fighting, and jousting. The company currently operates 10 castles across the United States and Canada. Its first North American location opened in Kissimmee, Florida, in December 1983, so apparently people have been happily eating dinner while watching knights knock each other around for more than four decades.

If knights are not your thing, there are always pirates. Pirates Dinner Adventure operates in Orlando, Florida, and Buena Park, California, with a large pirate ship serving as the centerpiece of the action. General admission includes a three-course dinner and a roughly 90-minute live show packed with fights, stunts, and audience participation. Dinner theater has apparently decided that quietly sitting at a table is overrated.

American Girl turned taking your doll out for the day into a legitimate dining experience. Select American Girl stores have cafes or restaurants offering meals and special events, including the company's popular teatime. The experience includes savory bites, small tea sandwiches, sweets, and tea, while children also receive a craft activity at the table. Naturally, dolls are welcome too.

Space 220 at EPCOT takes the themed-restaurant idea considerably farther than hanging a few planets on the wall. Guests begin by boarding a simulated "Stellarvator" that appears to transport them 220 miles above Earth to the fictional Centauri Space Station. Inside, enormous digital windows provide views of Earth and space while diners work through prix fixe menus. You never actually leave Florida, but the illusion is impressively committed.

The Magic Time Machine has locations in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas, and normal dining-room design does not seem to have been part of the plan. The restaurants are filled with wildly different themed seating areas, colorful decor, and costumed servers playing characters. You may not know exactly what era or fictional universe you have wandered into, which is more or less the point.

Beetle House operates in New York City and Los Angeles and bills itself as a year-round celebration of Halloween. The atmosphere draws inspiration from horror, gothic literature, film, magic, and creators ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker to Wes Craven and Tim Burton. It is important to note that the restaurant is not officially affiliated with Burton or any particular movie studio. What it does offer is an immersive dinner show, elaborate costumes, darkly themed food, and cocktails that look right at home in October, no matter what month it actually is.

Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colorado, has never been content with simply serving dinner. The sprawling Mexican-themed restaurant became famous for its theatrical interior, caves, performances, and cliff divers plunging into a pool beside its roughly 30-foot waterfall. The whole place feels like someone tried to fit a restaurant, amusement attraction, stage show, and fever dream under one roof. Somehow, it works.

New Orleans already does spooky pretty well, so a vampire restaurant hardly feels out of place. The New Orleans Vampire Cafe sits at 801 Royal Street in the French Quarter and leans fully into the theme with gothic decor, "Blood-Type" specialty cocktails, and a menu designed for what the restaurant jokingly calls vampires and mortals alike. No invitation into the building appears to be required.

The Heart Attack Grill in downtown Las Vegas has built its entire identity around doing the opposite of what your doctor would probably recommend. Customers are treated as "patients," servers dress as nurses, and diners are given hospital gowns to wear. The restaurant is also famous for its 350-pound promotion: customers who weigh more than 350 pounds on the restaurant's scale qualify for free Single Bypass Burgers. Subtlety has left the building.

Anyone afraid of heights may want to keep scrolling. Dinner in the Sky uses a crane to lift a dining platform about 50 meters, or roughly 164 feet, above the ground. The Belgium-based concept has staged thousands of events around the world, with diners strapped into seats around a table while chefs prepare the meal in the center. The view is hard to beat. Looking down may be optional.

At Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, Ithaa takes underwater dining literally. The restaurant sits about five meters beneath the Indian Ocean and surrounds diners with curved acrylic walls that provide a 180-degree view of the reef and marine life outside. Schools of fish can drift overhead while you eat. Ithaa opened as the world's first undersea restaurant, and nearly two decades later the setting still looks like something out of a movie.

Ali Barbour's Cave Restaurant at Diani Beach in Kenya does not need an artificial theme. The dining room sits inside a natural coral cave thought to be between 120,000 and 180,000 years old. Interconnected chambers and natural openings in the ceiling allow diners to see the sky above, especially striking after dark when the cave is lit largely by warm, low lighting. Sometimes the location does all the decorating for you.

Most restaurants train employees to be relentlessly polite. Dick's Last Resort took another route. The chain is built around intentionally sarcastic, rude, and irreverent service, with employees roasting customers as part of the experience. The first Dick's opened in Dallas in 1985, and the handmade paper hats covered with jokes and insults have become one of its trademarks. If your server mocks you, congratulations. Everything is going according to plan.

Taiwan's Modern Toilet became famous for taking bathroom humor to its logical extreme. The restaurants use toilets, bathtubs, sinks, and other bathroom fixtures as decor, seating, and serving vessels, with some dishes arriving in miniature toilet-shaped bowls. Whether that sounds hilarious or like an excellent way to lose your appetite probably tells you everything you need to know about whether this place is for you.

Dubai is known for heat, which makes a lounge kept at roughly minus 6 degrees Celsius, or about 21 degrees Fahrenheit, an especially strange place to spend an evening. Chillout Ice Lounge inside Times Square Center is filled with ice sculptures, ice seating, and frozen decor. Guests are supplied with thermal clothing, parkas, gloves, and winter footwear, while the menu includes warm drinks such as hot chocolate, coffee, and tea. In Dubai, apparently even being cold can be an attraction.

El Avión in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, is built around and above a Fairchild C-123 cargo plane. The aircraft itself has been converted into a pub, while the larger two-level restaurant surrounds it. Sitting roughly 150 meters above the beach, El Avión is also known for sweeping views of the Pacific and sunsets over Manuel Antonio. Plenty of restaurants display aviation memorabilia. This one decided to start with the entire plane.