A radically advanced restaurant in London will be the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.
The Bunyadi is bringing the basics back to the restaurant industry with a little nudity.
On June 10 the pop-up restaurant with a waiting list of around 46,000 people, opened its
doors. The natural eatery concept is thanks to Seb Lyall, who was behind last year’s ABQ bar with a Breaking Bad theme in London.
The Bunyadi — which is the Hindi term for “natural,” “base” or “fundamental” — will be clothing-optional and provides a menu of raw and natural seasonal food items. The ingredients will be absent of chemicals and artificial colors; there will also be vegan options. One of these five-course meals will cost around $100, including the robe you change into for the dining experience.
Continuing with the natural theme, the dining area won’t have electric lights and instead will be candlelit. Wooden table and chairs, earthenware bowls, edible cutlery and bamboo dividers will be in the dining room with a semi-nude waitstaff.
Guests will be directed to a changing area where they will be provided a locker where they can change into their robes and free themselves of modern technology and its aura. For sanitary reasons, guests will be asked to sit on their robes in the dining room.
Lyall says The Bunyadi is more than a restaurant but a social experiment. The social undertaking and restaurant collaboration will challenge the guests’ assumptions about nudity and what our modern world thinks is “natural.”
“When you get a chance, you take your clothes off,” Lyall told The Washington Post. “When you get in bed, you take your clothes off. When you go to the beach or a sauna, you take your clothes off. It’s natural.”
Even though this fundamental, back to basics restaurants is one in a million, leave your smartphones at home because photography and the use of phones are prohibited in the dining area. You’ll just have to strip down and enjoy the nudist way of eating. To make a reservation, visit The Bunyadi’s website.
Lauren Spiler is a freelance journalist based in Athens, Georgia, but most call her Spiler.