Food Fetish....
Is it just me or does everyone think some fantasies should remain exactly that?
Those crazy kids in Japan have come up with a new fad. It’s the fantasy cafe.
At Edelstein Boarding School Cafe, the male waiters look about 13 years old, wear school uniforms and lip gloss, and study only one subject: how to serve female visitors.
All customers at Edelstein are treated as “benefactresses” visiting the school, and the “students” are expected to wait on them hand and foot, chat, flirt and talk about their pretend homework.
It turns out there is a best-selling comic in Japan, based on boy-boy love at a German boarding school. Bizarrely, the comic books target single women in their 20s and 30s, and the proof is in the pudding. Edelstein Boarding School Cafe has been jam-packed with wealthy, giggling females since the day it opened.
Roleplay cafes have long been popular for men in Tokyo, but most of them involve young girls dressed in French maid outfits – not exactly imaginative.
The new breed of eatery is more leftfield, from the weird homoerotic boarding school caper to a Butler’s Cafe, where customers are given a tiara and a bell to summon servants.
Most young Japanese girls allegedly fantasize about fairytales, and at the Butler’s Cafe they need only tinkle a bell to have a handsome foreign waiter go down on one knee and ask: “Yes, my princess?”
I’m not convinced that’s the sort of thing Australian girls are after, but since the fantasy cafe industry is worth billions of yen in Japan, I decided to do a little survey with the people I work with.
My on-air partner Mark suggested a “Celebrity Café” where every customer is treated like Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise. “Paparazzi” would ambush you at the door, before bodyguards intervened to escort you to your table, shooing autograph hunters and threatening photographers along the way.
Once you were seated, wait staff would begin to fawn, complimenting your outfit and re-arranging the menu to suit your specific needs. And if there’s live music at some point, you’ll be asked on stage to “do a number with the band”.
Sadly, I reckon that one’s a goer.
One of our managers, Maree, suggested a fireman cafe where staff members dress in full regalia and look as though they’ve stepped off a calendar. Every hour or so there would be a scheduled emergency, during which every female patron would be swept into the arms of a burly waiter and rushed to safety.
Bec from promotions was pretty keen on Maree’s idea, but thought she’d upgrade it to lifesavers and include budgie smugglers and mouth-to-mouth.
My husband John came up with a restaurant for blokes who just wanted to dress themselves. A fantasy venue where you could wear stonewash jeans “because you paid a lot of money for them at the time” and brown shoes with a black belt “because sometimes it happens by accident and you should never be expected to go back and change”.
In a similar vein, my son wants a restaurant where you can put your feet on the table and eat with your hands (apparently table manners are archaic and pointless and it’s about time someone did something about it).
Rhyno, who does afternoons at Mix, wants an All You Can Eat restaurant, where the bloke who eats the most never has to pay the bill.
My boss (who prefers to remain nameless, but I’m sorely tempted) wants an Underbelly Bar, where everyone treats you like “the head of the family”, girls with extremely big breasts find you attractive and you get to “whack” anyone who gets in the way.
I don’t think he’d like it too authentic though. I’m pretty sure at least half the so-called Carlton Crew went face first into a bowl of pasta on Lygon Street.
Finally, Max, our (occasionally ornery) chief engineer, says his ultimate fantasy is a restaurant anywhere with amazing food, decent service and reasonable prices. He’s such a sweet man.
Those crazy kids in Japan have come up with a new fad. It’s the fantasy cafe.
At Edelstein Boarding School Cafe, the male waiters look about 13 years old, wear school uniforms and lip gloss, and study only one subject: how to serve female visitors.
All customers at Edelstein are treated as “benefactresses” visiting the school, and the “students” are expected to wait on them hand and foot, chat, flirt and talk about their pretend homework.
It turns out there is a best-selling comic in Japan, based on boy-boy love at a German boarding school. Bizarrely, the comic books target single women in their 20s and 30s, and the proof is in the pudding. Edelstein Boarding School Cafe has been jam-packed with wealthy, giggling females since the day it opened.
Roleplay cafes have long been popular for men in Tokyo, but most of them involve young girls dressed in French maid outfits – not exactly imaginative.
The new breed of eatery is more leftfield, from the weird homoerotic boarding school caper to a Butler’s Cafe, where customers are given a tiara and a bell to summon servants.
Most young Japanese girls allegedly fantasize about fairytales, and at the Butler’s Cafe they need only tinkle a bell to have a handsome foreign waiter go down on one knee and ask: “Yes, my princess?”
I’m not convinced that’s the sort of thing Australian girls are after, but since the fantasy cafe industry is worth billions of yen in Japan, I decided to do a little survey with the people I work with.
My on-air partner Mark suggested a “Celebrity Café” where every customer is treated like Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise. “Paparazzi” would ambush you at the door, before bodyguards intervened to escort you to your table, shooing autograph hunters and threatening photographers along the way.
Once you were seated, wait staff would begin to fawn, complimenting your outfit and re-arranging the menu to suit your specific needs. And if there’s live music at some point, you’ll be asked on stage to “do a number with the band”.
Sadly, I reckon that one’s a goer.
One of our managers, Maree, suggested a fireman cafe where staff members dress in full regalia and look as though they’ve stepped off a calendar. Every hour or so there would be a scheduled emergency, during which every female patron would be swept into the arms of a burly waiter and rushed to safety.
Bec from promotions was pretty keen on Maree’s idea, but thought she’d upgrade it to lifesavers and include budgie smugglers and mouth-to-mouth.
My husband John came up with a restaurant for blokes who just wanted to dress themselves. A fantasy venue where you could wear stonewash jeans “because you paid a lot of money for them at the time” and brown shoes with a black belt “because sometimes it happens by accident and you should never be expected to go back and change”.
In a similar vein, my son wants a restaurant where you can put your feet on the table and eat with your hands (apparently table manners are archaic and pointless and it’s about time someone did something about it).
Rhyno, who does afternoons at Mix, wants an All You Can Eat restaurant, where the bloke who eats the most never has to pay the bill.
My boss (who prefers to remain nameless, but I’m sorely tempted) wants an Underbelly Bar, where everyone treats you like “the head of the family”, girls with extremely big breasts find you attractive and you get to “whack” anyone who gets in the way.
I don’t think he’d like it too authentic though. I’m pretty sure at least half the so-called Carlton Crew went face first into a bowl of pasta on Lygon Street.
Finally, Max, our (occasionally ornery) chief engineer, says his ultimate fantasy is a restaurant anywhere with amazing food, decent service and reasonable prices. He’s such a sweet man.
posted by Caroline Hutchinson at 10:04 AM
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