Surely the greatest controversy of 2011 surrounds the decision not to reopen London’s only revolving restaurant for the 2012 Olympics. As one furious online reviewer noted, the Sunday brunch buffet “DID NOT INCLUDE TOAST” – a crime apparently so heinous, the manager felt compelled to allow the entire family to eat for free.
Who wouldn’t love an 80-story tower where every single floor rotates? Notably, architect Richard Fisher did not “say where the tower would be built, […] because he wanted to keep it a surprise.” Also, the answer “it will be solely built in my imagination” is not very compelling.Revolving restaurants are one example of a weird set of medals which a city feels it must accumulate to show it has “arrived” (modern art museums and aquariums are other examples, perhaps the basis of another top ten). However, whilst the Schilthorn restaurant is perched on a peak, looking down on all the surrounding mountains, the Mittelallalin restaurant is nestled within the surrounding peaks on one side, with views across to other peaks on the other side. Or the name may be another incident of the global “Couldn’t give a toss about the name, really” brand alignment typical of today’s revolving bistro.The last fruit cocktail left the Butlins-run Top of the Tower kitchens, in 1971, when the IRA bombed it, specifically the gents (playing to the “at least they narrowed down the list of suspects” comedy angle) at 4:30am. They partly funded construction of this beautiful mountaintop cafe by inviting the production company behind James Bond movies to furnish the interior and build a helipad, in return for filming climactic scenes for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – it’s arch-villain Blofeld’s “Allergy Clinic”. The revolving restaurant on the Schilthorn is at a lower altitude (2,970 metres above sea level). This village of 2,000 people is completing a 74 story tower, and the restaurant will doubtless feed some of the 3 million Chinese tourists who visit the, somewhat Swiss-looking village, each year to understand how it became so wealthy. Pinterest. By the second conflict, it clearly had something going for it. And each floor would be a restaurant of a different cuisine (all right, that’s not true). You can only set your username once.Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Express/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Rykoff Collection/Corbis via Getty ImagesPhotograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis via Getty ImagesPhotograph: Granger/REX/ShutterstockPhotograph: Robert Wallis/Corbis via Getty ImagesPhotograph: Barry Lewis/Corbis via Getty ImagesBefore you post, we’d like to thank you for joining the debate - we’re glad you’ve chosen to participate and we value your opinions and experiences.Please preview your comment below and click ‘post’ when you’re happy with it.Photograph: swim ink 2 llc/Corbis via Getty ImagesFrom Seattle’s Space Needle to London’s old Post Office Tower, via Liverpool, Dallas and Jaipur, restaurants have rotated at the top of spaceship-like buildings since the 1960sPhotograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images
Clearly a poignant message for all of us, though I’m not sure what it is.Without wishing to discredit some rather fabulous ideas, does this sound credible? Merely building the tower has increased the footprint of the village by over 30%, while increasing the number of local revolving restaurants by considerably more than this.The aptly named “Kazakhstan Revolving Restaurant” in Astana, is a revolving restaurant in Kazakhstan. At one point he was aiming for seven in North Korea. From Seattle’s Space Needle to London’s old Post Office Tower, via Liverpool, Dallas and Jaipur, restaurants have rotated at the top of spaceship-like buildings since the 1960s This restaurant is still in operation, raising the possibility that some of them are still queuing.
More notable for our purposes, however, is the restaurant at the top of the 105 story Ryugyong Hotel, which began construction in 1987, then halted in 1992, due to lack of raw materials (such as food for the construction workers). Luckily, an official was on hand to confirm that “the dioxin rate of the incinerator is far below the standard rate” while another told a TV station “Diners can enjoy the view of Taipei and also examine the cleanliness of our garbage incinerator”.