BLAST FROM THE PAST: Theme / Celeb Restaurants (i.e. Fashion Cafe, Rainforest Cafe, NYLA, etc.)

Photos: Wikipedia;  Ranker; Mental Floss; Tasting Table; ONTD.

Kitschy. Overpriced. Tourist traps. This describes the theme / celeb restaurant trend of the 1980s - 2000s. Above are a few examples - Fashion Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Rainforest Cafe, Dive! (owned by Steven Spielberg), Pastamania (owned by Hulk Hogan), and NYLA (owned by Britney Spears).  The idea of theme restaurants has been around for decades but how did they get their start?

Well, it goes back to the 1950s. Back then tiki bars and Polynesian cuisine was all the rage. If you've seen the movie Goodfellas, it features one which is keeping with their popularity during this time. Tiki and Polynesian bars are early examples of combing a theme, food, and amusement.

When Disney opened its theme park in 1955, the park took the idea of combining food and amusement by establishing restaurants inside the park that reflected this. It later paved the way for placed such as Chuck E. Cheese, Medieval Times, and many others. Then in 1971, the concept of food + amusement went a step further when music and celebrity worshiping were combined. This gave birth to The Hard Rock Cafe. The popularity of theme restaurants continued to grow and spawned numerous ventures in the 1980s - 2000s including the proliferation of restaurants owned by celebrities to capitalize on their name recognition and fame. Many of them were shorted lived due poor quality of food, financial issues, or over estimating the public's desire for the concept. 

There was the Fashion Cafe which was fronted by Naomi Campbell, Elle McPherson, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy Turlington which lasted 3 years. Britney Spears opened NYLA, which was an abbreviation of New York and Louisiana. The restaurant served cajun food and lasted less than 2 years. JLo opened Madre's in LA, which served Puerto Rican cuisine. It received terrible reviews. The LA Times called the food, "beyond memorable and close to inedible".  How it was able to last 4 years is a mystery. 

Interior photo of JLo's "Madre's". Photo: Getty Images

Steven Spielberg opened Dive!, which was shaped like a submarine and served submarine sandwiches - it managed to stay in business for 4 years. Hulk Hogan's "Pastamania", which opened in the Mall of Americas lasted one year. Brothers Stephen and William Baldwin opened "Society 5", which was a Mediterranean restaurant in NYC . It closed after one year.  Planet Hollywood which opened in 1991 claimed Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone as its original investors (it's still around with 6 locations). There were so many of these places popping up that it became the norm to see them littering the restaurant landscape. 

Here's an old commercial for the Rainforest Cafe. It's still around - but they've been closing locations. I took my mom to a Rainforest Cafe back in the early 1990s in Chicago. She liked it. It made her happy so it was worth me faking enjoyment. IMO, the food was mediocre and the atmosphere loud and garish.

While most of these theme and celeb restaurants have long shuttered, there are some that still exists. The House of Blues is one of the few success stories. One of its early investors was Dan Akroyd who is a big fan of blues music (and an astute businessman).  It's now owned by Live Nation with Aykroyd still involved. It's managed to succeed through a combination of good business discipline, not catering to whims, and not over expanding.

BTW, The Hard Rock Cafe is still around but it has declined in popularity due to over expansion (it has 200 locations). This resulted in it losing its "cool factor" - and becoming something of a joke. 

(FFS, there's a Hard Rock Cafe & Casino in Gary, Indiana. It has a population of 75,000 and the city is ranked as one of the worst shitholes places in the US by World Population Review. Apologies if I offended anyone from there).