As news beaks of a new dining experience opening in London, courtesy of the highly creative theatre and restaurant group Funicular, we thought we’d take a look at the rise of immersive dining.
Technically, immersive dining isn’t all that new.
Roll back 25 years and there was a trend for school dinner evenings where guests would arrive in school uniform, eat in a canteen-style environment and the evening would be overseen by ‘teachers’ in flowing cloaks and mortar boards.
In recent years, things have got a lot more sophisticated.
Companies such as Funicular have brought the concept of immersive dining into the public consciousness and have made going out to dinner a true experience.
Immersive dining has been part of the MGN events bag of tricks for quite some time and working on events of this type is always incredibly rewarding.
Not only are we inspired by the fantastic ideas that many of our clients have, we then get even more excited as the possibilities of what can be done become more apparent.
It’s led to some superb parties!
So what kind of immersive dining parties have we created?
One of our favourites has to be a party themed around the hit movie Back to the Future.
We conjured up the 1950s inside a marquee, including an American diner where dinner was served.
From the banquette seating to the jukebox playing rock’n’roll tunes, right down to the menus it was like stepping back in time.
The bar and waiting staff were dressed for the era and the food served included burgers and fries, ice-cream sundaes and milkshakes.
We also injected a sense of theatre into a surprise birthday party, bringing to life Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a private park.
The natural environment provided an enchanting party space and where guests would dine beneath a tipi.
The decoration, using lots of foliage and rustic props, created that all-important immersive atmosphere and it wasn’t stretching the imagination too far to believe that mischievous Puck wasn’t hidden amongst the trees observing the mortals having fun!
But immersive dining doesn’t have to be all about working to a particular theme as such.
Take for instance, a wedding reception we organised.
Held in the bride’s family home, the secret of creating an immersive dining experience was to transform the orangery into a very special space that looked completely different.
We furnished the space with different furniture and our technical production team installed a sophisticated lighting scheme that enhanced the purple colour theme for a really stylish atmosphere.
Why not make your next party an immersive dining experience? Get in touch with MGN events to find out how we could make yours THE social event of the year!
