A group of 22 Belgian chefs enjoy a plate of oysters at a table suspended by crane 150 feet above Brussels.
Diners sit inside a restaurant made of ice in Harbin, China. The restaurant seats about 100 people and is part of the ongoing Sun Island Snow Carving and Ice Sculpture Exposition.
Dog owners wait for their order at the Coolbaby dog restaurant in Beijing. The dishes offered are based on nutritional science and tailor-made for dogs of different breeds, ages, and sizes. Having dogs in the home was banned under the rule of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong and was only made legal once again a few years ago.
Customers play cards on toilet seats at a commode-themed restaurant in Shenzhen, in south China's Guangdong province. Diners use toilet seats as chairs as they eat food served in miniature bath tubs and toilet bowls.
In this image, taken with a false-color infrared flash, customers dine in complete darkness at Opaque in West Hollywood, California. In this truly unique dining experience, guests are served a three-course gourmet meal by blind waiters.
This is a dining table at the now-shuttered Aurum restaurant in Singapore. Aurum serves a unique cuisine known as molecular gastronomy — an avant-garde cooking movement that uses scientific methods to create new flavors in food. There wasn't much of an explanation as to why they used wheelchairs as seats, though.
Inside a Dutch university in Wageningen, there's a restaurant where academics and companies can study consumer behavior by watching diners' reactions to new food products, packaging, and restaurant design. Just like in "Big Brother," the customers' every move are tracked by cameras.
Photographs showing all the people who appeared on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album hang on a wall in the Blakes restaurant at the the Hard Days Night Hotel in Liverpool, England. The 110-room Beatles-themed hotel is not far from the site of the famous Cavern Club, where the Beatles performed in their early days.
Officially Tokyo's first schoolboy cafe, Edelstein Cafe is one of several eateries in Japan where customers and waiters act out scenes from manga comics. Here they perform as school teachers and students.
Lorenzo Pepe sits next to a statue of former Argentine President Juan Peron at the "Un cafe con Peron" restaurant in Buenos Aires. Although reviled by his critics as an authoritarian and forced to live in exile for almost two decades, Peron remained Argentina's leading political figure from his first presidential term in 1946 to his death in 1974.
A ticker showing current drink prices runs behind the bar of The Exchange Bar & Grill in New York City. The Exchange is stock market–themed, with prices for food and beverages fluctuating like stock prices according to demand.
A man dressed as a maid named "Kalina" serves customers at Hibaritei cafe in Tokyo. The cafe, whose servers are all men dressed as maids, has several locations in the Akihabara district. The area is now considered the center of Tokyo's nerd culture.
The owner of this restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, said she bought it for $927,600. The purchase price included four robots — one of which is seen serving food to customers here.
Food is served 16 feet underneath the Indian Ocean in the Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, on the Maldives island of Rangali. It was voted the world's most beautiful restaurant in 2014 by the New York Daily News.
British set designer Tony Hornecker prepares dinner at his restaurant, "The Pale Blue Door." Made with scrap materials scavenged from the streets, it's located in one of Berlin's central community gardens. Hornecker said that he does not make any profits with his fanciful underground restaurant, but he feels that he is giving Berlin a unique attraction.
An employee pours boiling water into a pot at a restaurant built with giant ice cubes during an ice festival in Harbin, in China's Heilongjiang province, in 2012.
A waiter serves customers inside a converted coach bus in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China. A couple bought an old bus with around 20,000 RMB ($3,206) and transformed it into a barbecue restaurant in an old residential compound in the city.
Robots deliver dishes to customers at a restaurant in Harbin, China. Opened in June 2012, the restaurant has become famous for using 20 robots to cook meals and deliver dishes. The robots can work continuously for five hours after a two-hour charge, and they're able to display more than 10 expressions on their faces.
Employees serve customers during the media preview of a Barbie-themed cafe in Taipei in 2013. The 7,000 square-foot Barbie Cafe, which has since closed, had decor and dishes that were inspired by Mattel's dolls.
Heart Attack Grill owner Jon poses with a cheeseburger in Chandler, Arizona, in 2009. The restaurant is known for its hospital theme, and diners are made to wear hospital gowns as they eat burgers with names like the triple and quadruple bypass. The Arizona restaurant has since closed and moved to a new location in Las Vegas.
A cat sleeps in his basket as a waitress serves some food to customers in Vienna's first cat cafe. Diners can stroke and interact with their five feline hosts, who all came from an animal shelter and freely roam about the cafe and take naps. Similar cafes have since opened in New York, Denver, San Diego, Paris, and Copenhagen, as well as in several other global cities.
A waitress pours tea inside an egg-shaped dining booth at an Airbus A380-themed restaurant. Dubbed "Special Enjoyment," the restaurant is located in Chongqing, China and has six private rooms.
A Thai waiter wears a condom over his head while serving a cocktail to a paton at the Cabbages and Condoms restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand. The restaurant, founded by Mechai Viravaidya, aims to educate the public about safe sex.
Actor Petrica Moraru performs for guests of the Club Count Dracula restaurant in Bucharest, Romania.
An employee paints the outer decoration of a cafe bar in Prague's district of Holesovice. The cafe bar is a uniquely designed multicultural center with a futuristic design and many unusual artifacts.
At a hospital-themed restaurant in Taipei, a waitress dressed in a nurse uniform serves a drink to a customers using a drip.
Diners can enter a working Italian prison dating back to the Renaissance at the Fortezza Medicea in Volterra. Started as a rehabilitation program for inmates, the restaurant is run within the prison. Customers have to go through background checks and several checkpoints, but reservations are nearly always full.
