Fully immersive experiences have become increasingly more popular throughout the entertainment industry, from the advent of “mystery dinner theater” to the explosion of team-oriented escape rooms, to more extensive creations like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios, as well as next year’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser resort.
Now, specialty food and beverage operator Wonderland Restaurants is looking to break into that market by “creating experiential concepts that leverage off the back off global family entertainment [intellectual properties].” The company’s inaugural project, set to debut later this year in the Soho area of Westminster in the West End of London, will be “a huge, multi-faceted restaurant inspired by” both the DC universe and Batman that will fill the basement of an art deco building that was once occupied by a Titanic-themed restaurant run by seminal celebrity chef Marco Pierre White.
Named Park Row, the 18,000 square-foot location is set to feature five restaurants, including: British eatery Pennyworth’s, named after the family of the Wayne’s butler; international cuisine and live entertainment venue of The Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge; the “villainous speakeasy” Old Gotham City; an omakase restaurant in which diners give full control of their culinary journey to their chef, themed after Harley Quinn; and the upscale establishment The Monarch Theatre, which will utilize “projection mapping technology said to explore the psychology of heroism through food.”
Park Row, otherwise known as Crime Alley and first appearing in Detective Comics #457 in March of 1976, is the area of Gotham City where socialites Martha and Thomas Wayne were notoriously murdered in front of their young son Bruce, thus planting the seed that would eventually grow into the world’s greatest detective, Batman. The restaurant complex, which will see prices ranging from about $60 per person up to $155 per diner at the Monarch, will be developed in partnership “with Warner Bros. to create their first immersive DC-inspired gastronomic restaurant experience found anywhere in the world.”
Sounds pretty awesome all things considered, and hopefully we’ll be able to check out this new experience firsthand later this year when it opens.