My two primary doctors have offices in the city and when I go in with my mother for great moral support we also try to do something fun while we're in Manhattan to make the appointments a little less daunting. This time me and mama played tourist and started out our day with the Ripley's Believe it or not Museum. Neither of us would suggest going there. It's a little disappointing. But it framed out theme of weirdness for the day, so when we got hungry we went off to get some lunch at the Jekyll and Hyde Club in Times Square. You don't see an entrance to the place, and if you didn't look at the menu out front you wouldn't even know that it was a restaurant. There is a man in a top hat standing next to the sign and a phone booth. To enter the restaurant you have to dial the phone and recite the password that the doorman gives you. When you're accepted in a door at the back of the phone booth will open, leading you to a series of two rooms with one way mirrors and paintings with cut outs through the eyes. One room would have been enough because, well, we were hungry. But it was well worth it once we actually got in.
The place reminds me of the Young Sherlock Holmes movie. The restaurant is decked out in collectibles from mysterious lands like Africa and the East, places that were still considered somewhat exotic in the early 1900s. Mounted on the wall were a sphinx head, an elephant head, gargoyles, and crocodile skeletons. A cabinet of skulls greets you as you walk in before you take your seat in black leather upholstered furniture. As I took my seat I was able to fully appreciate the menagerie of oddities that were collected. It was like a mad Victorian scientist used a time machine to collect memorabilia from every decade. The place had everything from a statue of Zeus to an interactive robot.
The menu is pretty standard for a theme restaurant: burgers, salads, nachos, stuff like that. But the food is actually really pretty good, though it may not sound like anything special. Their drinks are themed to fit the atmosphere, with names like "Elixir" that make you feel like you're drinking a special formula that will either give you superpowers or turn you into a werewolf. Props to their ginger lime drink.
As you sip your magic potion and eat your burger the entertainment goes on all around you. The elephant head, the gargoyle, and the sphinx head all interact with you, singing, and talking, and spouting random facts, while actors come around to your table and keep you company as you eat. The two actors we had were a young man in a fes and a young German "doctor" with a steampunk eye patch. They walk around the restaurant, cracking jokes and interacting with the things on the walls, compliment you, and entertain you. After a while I kind of just wanted to eat my burger without being watched, but otherwise these guys were really a lot of fun. I think that Jekyll and Hyde is not only a really fun theme, but also a theme that actually works well for a restaurant because it can translate into food, unlike hard rock.
Forever the honest,
Stephanie Lato
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