Kinky Dining Or Fetishism Gone Wild?

IF I WAS TO ASK you how you liked your food, the chances are you might say ‘hot’, but these days you might also say naked or even blindfolded because dining has gone all kinky and shows no sign of returning to normal anytime soon.

It’s probably fair to say it all started with the Japanese and specifically with the dining experience known as Nyotaimori (Body Sushi). This form of dining is a service allowing restaurant customers to eat from the skin of a naked woman. Apart from her crotch, which is usually covered with some kind of garnish, the model’s modesty depends on the (temporary) position of the food on her body.  As a phenomenon, this kinky method of downing your raw fish received a lot of media attention in the West back in the 1990s but the reality is that such practices are rate in Japan and usually reserved for the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia).

In fairness when I was in Japan there a few years ago I didn’t find any of these establishments, but if I had come across one of these sushi joints with the naked women I’d probably have been tempted to check it out, although I’m not sure SusiQ would have shared my enthusiasm

Of course, not wishing to be outdone, the West responded in recent years with blindfold dining, also known as ‘dark dining’ The concept here is that all kinds of sensory provoking foods are served to completely blindfolded dining guests. In theory the blindness heightens other senses (like smell, taste, touch) thereby increasing the sensory experience and pleasure of eating the food in the first place. There are even some places who will cater for wedding parties in this manner. Go figure!

More recently again, and in New York in particular, the trend has now turned towards naked dining, where the only ones in the joint who are dressed are in fact the serving staff. All guests are required to be completely naked while dining. On the plus side I guess there is nowhere for anyone to stuck their mobile phones so at least your dining experience would be an quiet one.

As if that wasn’t whacky enough how about attending a dinner party on a frame hanging from a crane, suspended 150m above the ground? You think I’m kidding… check out the photo on the left there and think again. This is yet another direction for diners to consider, known as extreme dining, where the food is served in, well, extreme circumstances.

I love my food and in fairness I’m not above a bit of kinky now and then, but I do have to wonder what’s next for diners in this growing trend towards the extreme. It’s as if we’ve all become bored with a normal existance and now must seek pleasure in dark and dangerous places because we’re afraid that if we don’t do something extreme we will just fade away into the background, like everyone else.

Just how extreme does dining need to be I wonder?

Technorati Tags: blind dining, body sushi, extreme dining, Japan, kinky dining, naked dining, Nyotaimori