On a recent Wednesday night, a long line of hungry people formed outside the Paramount Hotel on 46th Street. “The three people that come up and describe the best sexual fantasy will be let in first,” the doorman tells the crowd. To those who approach him and reveal their deepest desires, he replies, “I think we can handle that for you.”
Welcome to the new Diamond Horseshoe. After closing in 1951, the historic club, famed for its vaudevillestyle revues and long-legged showgirls, has been reincarnated after a $20 million renovation. It reopened on New Year’s Eve with an interactive dinner club show called “Queen of the Night” from the Box owner Simon Hammerstein and “Sleep No More” producer Randy Weiner.
The show, which describes itself as a “dark debutante ball” and is loosely based on Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” features aerial acrobatics, a simulated sex scene, lobsters served from elaborate cages, whole roasted pigs and butlers prone to asking guests to slow dance.
Worked up an appetite yet?
“Queen of the Night” is just the latest in a new wave of theatrical dining experiences sweeping the city and putting fresh, provocative takes on the oft-disparaged notion of dinner theater. A new, 150-seat restaurant called the Heath was added to Chelsea’s McKittrick Hotel (home to the “Sleep No More” show) in late November; it serves traditional British fare, along with notes from 16th-century witches, taxidermied coyotes and mysterious strangers apt to pull diners into a back room for a secretive chat. [See review on page 30.] “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” a pop opera adapted from “War and Peace,” performed alongside a menu of pierogies and vodka, has garnered heaps of critical praise and just extended its off-Broadway run at Kazino in the Theater District for the third time.
Such attention deficit dining is tailor-made for the Instagram generation — an endless photo op where everything but the kitchen sink is thrown at you while you’re trying to eat.
“It’s an interactive, personal experience,” enthuses Jennifer Cho, a 34-year-old marketer who attended a recent “Queen of the Night” performance. “Lifestyle experiences are so much trendier than just sitting and being an observer.”
Of course, the interactive element doesn’t come cheaply. For general admission tickets to “Queen of the Night,” guests pay $125 to $175, roughly the cost of the tasting menu at Le Bernardin, for a dining experience that’s more fancy wedding than four-star restaurant.
At the Diamond Horseshoe, the show — er, “experience” — begins with guests mingling and sipping rosemary-infused cocktails (named the Queen’s Bush) from a marble bar topped with tubes and bubbling beakers like a mad scientist’s table.
Properly loosened up, the crowd — a mix of young professionals and older artsy types, all smartly clad in cocktail attire — descends a great marble staircase into the mirror-ensconced ballroom. “Butlers” in tuxedo shirts and shorts quickly descend on guests and whisk them away for decadent activities.
“When I walked in, I got separated from my boyfriend and our group of four,” recalls 30-year-old Liz Ferris. “I got paired up and put onstage facing a guy named Patrick, who was separated from his boyfriend, too. The butlers had us feed each other a saffron flower and talk to each other about the experience, and the flower made our mouths numb!”
Ferris, who works in finance and was there as part of a friend’s birthday outing, also enjoyed the simulated sex scene that’s part of a modern dance in the middle of the show.
“It was so sexy, like a porno in real life,” she enthuses. “But not uncomfortable.”
And, she insists that the food was just as pleasurable, even though it was something of a DIY affair. Some tables are served lobsters while others get a whole suckling pig. An appointed diner carves up the hog after getting a brief butchery lesson from a butler.
“Usually at dinner theater, the food is just there for show,” Ferris says. “But this was about the experience of slicing the pig on a spit, and it was delicious, too!”
Diners are served surf or turf at random — it’s by chance, not choice — to get guests to interact with one another.
“The butlers encouraged us to barter, so we stole lobster from the table next to ours,” Ferris recalls.
After the meal, guests are encouraged to literally throw their leftover food, plates and silverware into big white tubs that servers cart around. Tossing it all away was a “cathartic experience” according to Jojo Kendale, 27 and a private tutor. Butlers encourage post-dinner dancing before a chocolate dessert is served.
Hiroshi Mashimo, a physician visiting from Boston with a friend, gushes about the entire experience. “It’s kind of a roll-in of all the theatrics you’d expect of Blue Man Group, dinner theater, Cirque du Soleil, together with a wonderful dinner with the 50-something.
Not everyone was thrilled with their tablemates — most tables seat six or eight people, turning strangers into dining companions, for better or for worse. “One of the actors came to our table and suggested we play a game of truth or dare,” says Michelle Paul, a 31-year-old who works in tech. “I wish the people we were paired with had picked up on it a little more. It sounded like fun.”
Lisa G., a 56-year-old philanthropist and social worker, was plenty happy with her other dinner guests. She’d met Mashimo standing in line for the show and hopes to see him again in the future.
“I’m definitely calling [him],” she says. “I knew I was supposed to meet someone like him, and I did here!”
Queen of the Night runs Tuesday through Sunday, through Feb. 23 at the Diamond Horseshoe at the Paramount Hotel, 235 W. 46th St. For tickets visit queenofthenightnyc.com or call 866-811-4111; $125 to $175 for general admission, $250 to $300 for premium that includes unlimited cocktails, and $475 to $500 for an ultimate ticket that includes bottle service and a special menu chosen by the executive chef.