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Chuck E. Cheese is a place for mum-on-mum deathmatches. An uninvited kid joined another kid's party. And when the cops finally showed up, they found a rumble between 40 bloodthirsty parents. More, plus video:
A Beijing man has opened a restaurant themed after his favourite MMORPG: World of Warcraft. After chomping down food, inspired by dishes from Azeroth, customers can log on at various terminals to play WoW.
So modern treehouses aren't new, but the designers of this project in New Zealand have crafted something that blends fantastically with its host redwood tree. The fungus or chrysalis-shaped building—take your aesthetic pick—will be a smallish restaurant built by, of all people, the NZ Yellow Pages. It's currently under construction from laminated pine, plantation poplar and redwood thirty feet up a giant tree in a place north of Auckland. Getting there'll be fun when it's finished though: entry is via a 120-foot high treetop walkway. [Contemporist via Born Rich]
Are you a socially awkward individual that loves eating out but hates talking to real people on the phone? Then you probably already know about OpenTable, the awesome online reservation site. Now they've got a free iPhone app that's even slicker and easier to use than their actual (or mobile) site. It'll find the restaurants closest to you and throw 'em on a Google map along with their available times—a few presses later, and you're booked (even if you don't have an OpenTable account).
Contemporist has a great post on Inamo, one of the newer restaurants in London's West End, which boasts fully interactive tables with touch technology. The tables function use overhead projectors and touch panels on the tables that work together to display things like menus, as well as rotate through a series of seven tablecloths according to the patrons preference. Customers are also able to order directly from the digital menu, reducing waiters to little more than human FAQs.
OpenTable is a great website that lets you reserve tables at restaurants without having to deal with calling and being put on hold and, you know, talking to another human being. You simply choose your restaurant, the date, and the time you want, and it'll tell you when the closest available reservation is available. Presto, you've got a reservation. Now, they're making it more convenient by releasing a mobile app that'll let you make restaurant reservations from your phone (without calling anyone). As someone who uses OpenTable relatively frequently to get reservations at restaurants, this is pretty sweet news to me. Hit the jump for the presser.
Good Morning America did a segment this morning on Hi-Tech food and restaurant gadgets, which ranged from really cool to really weird. There are menus that yap at you, doggie bags for your unfinished bottles of wine, and a waiter pager so that you can harass that smug bastard who's been ignoring you. But the best gadget in the lot was the automatic pasta vending machine, which takes dry pasta, dispenses it into a cooker, and a couple minutes later, it craps out a pile of "hot, steaming pasta" into a bowl. While you wait for it to cook, it warms your sauce. Truly bizarre.
A BBC News crew went to Germany to try 's Baggers, the robotised, fully automated restaurant in which there's not a single waiter in sight and plates float over your head on steel rails to reach your seat, Futurama-style. And apparently, they loved it.
When I look at a menu in a restaurant, even one with pictures, making a decision about what to order can be difficult. Sometimes you just need to see what you are getting into before you commit. The folks at TEC Japan have been working on a device that can assist the picky eater by rendering items chosen on a digital menu in 3D right at your table. There is even a novelty function that will procure a 3D beef patty when a hamburger bun is placed on the menu.
Unless I'm in a fancy restaurant, I generally don't need to interact a whole lot with the wait staff. When I'm dining at Chili's, its all about getting my fajita as quick as possible. The folks in Japan realise that a middleman is not always necessary, which is why they are developing products like the Deli-Touch.
Good Morning America did a segment this morning on Hi-Tech food and restaurant gadgets, which ranged from really cool to really weird. There are menus that yap at you, doggie bags for your unfinished bottles of wine, and a waiter pager so that you can harass that smug bastard who's been ignoring you. But the best gadget in the lot was the automatic pasta vending machine, which takes dry pasta, dispenses it into a cooker, and a couple minutes later, it craps out a pile of "hot, steaming pasta" into a bowl. While you wait for it to cook, it warms your sauce. Truly bizarre. 
A BBC News crew went to Germany to try 's Baggers, the 