CNN
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Want to get naked while getting dinner in London?
Keep your clothes on for now and join the back of a very, very long line.
More than 32,000 people have signed up for a chance to dine at Bunyadi, a pop-up restaurant billed as the UK capital’s first “naked food experience.”
Opening in June, the central London venue will offer gowns, changing rooms and lockers to guests wanting to digest the sight of their own exposed skin while getting their chow on.
Only 42 diners a time will fit in the restaurant – at an as-yet-undisclosed location – meaning that many of those hoping for a naked lunch, or dinner, will be disappointed.
“I’m both surprised and excited by the response,” Seb Lyall, whose company Lollipop is behind the venture, tells CNN.
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“People want to be naked. Whether it’s on a beach or in a sauna, if the opportunity is there to be in a natural state, they will take it.”
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Paying up to $95-a-head for food and drinks, diners will be able to choose between clothed and “naked and pure” seating areas, where they’ll be served by semi-nude staff.
Selfies, mercifully, will be impossible as guests will have to leave their devices behind when entering the candlelit restaurant.
Lyall says to create a completely natural environment, both the restaurant and its kitchen will be run without electricity or gas.
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Instead, its menu of vegan and non-vegan dishes will be prepared using wood fires by chefs who will, hopefully, be wearing more than just hairnets and aprons.
Food will be served on earthenware crockery and eaten with edible cutlery.
“Wood-hewn” tables will be separated by bamboo and wicker partitions.
Bunyadi, says Lyall, will offer customers “true liberation” by providing both naked, unprocessed food and an environment unspoiled by modern technology or attitudes.
“I’m inspired by the movement to more natural, stripped-back things,” he says.
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Diners can choose between clothed and non-clothed areas.
Diners will have the option of keeping their robes on, but Lyall expects most will want to at least partially strip down.
“At the very least, they’ll probably go topless,” he says.
Places at the restaurant will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis.
Up to 2,000 diners will be given a two-hour window to book before their places are offered to the next 2,000.
Lyall describes the venture as a “social experiment” that, despite the initial demand, may not be sustainable as a more permanent fixture.
While a naked restaurant might be way too weird for a first date, for more established couples it could be a thrilling, memorable and possibly even romantic night out.
But if he pops the question, just don’t ask where he was hiding the ring.