Whenever someone asks me about ‘strange’ or ‘bizarre’ restaurants in Tokyo, I direct them to prison-themed dining experience The Lock Up. The site’s in Japanese but I think you can get the gist.
Three of us intrepid explorers visited this hideaway in Shibuya recently, at my insistence. Sorry guys! It’s in a basement, at the end of a corridor lined with animatronic jump-scares. On entry, one of you is declared the ‘criminal’ and handcuffed by ‘the police’. You’re then led to your table inside a prison cell. The door thankfully doesn’t lock, so toilet breaks are nice and simple.
Navigating the menu can be tricky – and not just because it’s in Japanese. Creative names and presentation make it hard to detemine what you’re ordering. As well as having prison-themed elements, The Lock Up also delves into the world of mad science.
The yummy-looking concotion above is in fact a cocktail. Complete with squishy jelly eyeball and fizzy Medusa hair laces. One of our other drinks was a row of test tubes, to be mixed into a glass with an ice brain at the bottom.
Underneath the novelty value, the food’s pretty standard. Pizza, salads, fried chicken. The best thing about the Jenga hash browns is how neatly they’ve been stacked.
Every so often, the already low lighting cuts to black. Sirens blare and lights flash all around you. The real prisoners have escaped! And they’re heading for your cell.
I was ready for this. But I made a terrible mistake. I’ve been to The Lock Up before, and they didn’t come into the room. I thought we were safe. This time, a skeleton sauntered in and sat next to me. The others laugh-screamed as it tried to feed me. Death by hash browns isn’t how I wanted to go!
We stayed on high alert until ‘the police’ turned up and shot the prisoners. Only flesh wounds, as we saw a creepy clown shuffling back towards the ‘staff only’ door in chains. The lights went back up a little bit and everyone got back on with their dinner.
Most dessert options had too many eyes for us to be comfortable eating them. That’s the main crime here: against foods I’d usually be raring to try. Do I want my tiramisu staring while I devour it? No. So we high-tailed it to the till and got out of there.
The Lock Up’s not exactly close for UK readers, but it is something you should definitely do in Tokyo.
