You book a table for dinner, but eventually find yourself on your feet, dancing to live music. Elsewhere, dessert comes with a fashion show, while the bar transforms into a stage for stand-up. Book readings, salsa performances, jam sessions, fashion showcases and DJ sets are increasingly part of your dining experience as restaurants across the country compete to offer diners something beyond the plate.
For those who have grown up with the language of immersive dining and Instagrammable nights out, the hybrid format may feel fresh.
But there is something amusing about calling it a new trend when places such as Trincas in Kolkata have been doing precisely this for decades (it turns 100 next year), without a hashtag or ring light in sight.
Recently we had a chat with third-generation owner and historian Anand Puri, about a night out in the 60s, where you could dress up, order a Chicken à la Kiev, listen to a live band, encounter Usha Uthup, dance, flirt, watch a cabaret show and stay for another round. There was no need to manufacture an “immersive experience” he argued, because the experience was already there.
Just as it is still there in the easy, electric vibe of Martin’s Corner, a social institution since the 1980s; the jukebox, murals and unmistakable personality of Café Mondegar; and the old-world bustle of United Coffee House.
The common thread is not novelty. It is identity.
Perhaps these places survived because they know what they are. They have evolved, certainly, but without dismantling the very things people come to them for. The music, the room, the food, the people and the possibility that something might happen once you walk through the door is all part of the experience.
And perhaps that is the takeaway for the new crop of experiential restaurants. There is nothing wrong with giving diners more than a meal. In a world increasingly lived through screens, people are looking for the tactile and the real. A singer performing three feet away, strangers laughing at the same joke, the energy of a crowded dance floor, and the unpredictability of an actual evening out.
Sometimes the best way forward is simply to remember why people wanted to go out in the first place.