Friday, October 9, 2009
A hot spot called Hell’s Café
Modern franchised theme restaurants can’t hold a proverbial candle to what may have been the first restaurant of its type.
A hot spot called Hell’s Café lured 19th-century Parisians to the city’s Montmartre neighborhood—like the Marais—on the Right Bank of the Seine. With plaster lost souls writhing on its walls and a bug-eyed devil’s head for a front door, le Café de l’Enfer may have been one of the world’s first theme restaurants. According to one 1899 visitor, the café’s doorman—in a Satan suit—welcomed diners with the greeting, “Enter and be damned!” Hell’s waiters also dressed as devils. An order for three black coffees spiked with cognac was shrieked back to the kitchen as: “Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!”
How in the world can I be impressed with an old baseball bat on the wall at TGIFriday’s when Hell’s Cafe had writhing lost souls on the walls?
Saturday, October 3, 2009
No One Can Hear You Scream...
A Canadian circus billionaire boarded the International Space Station on Friday after a smooth ride up from Earth, and promptly played the entertainer by donning a red clown nose for a camera. Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte became the seventh paying space tourist to travel to the station, where he plans to mix clownish fun with a serious message about the growing shortage of clean water on the planet 220 miles (355 kilometers) below.
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