Is This London's Most Bizarre Restaurant?

LONDON, Aug. 19, 2009 — -- Tucked away down a narrow east London side street, far removed from the buzz of the metropolis, is the city's latest secret dining experiment.

The Pale Blue Door, a pop up restaurant/art installation, taps into any curiosity junkie's base instincts. The mystery behind it is part of the seduction. For a start, its address isn't listed. Instead details are divulged via e-mail after a deposit for a booking has been paid. And then the adventure of trying to find it begins.

After circumnavigating the turns of London's one-way back streets, the destination finally reached is the house of artist Tony Hornecker. Like any true artist, his home is far from ordinary. A knock on the decaying pale blue entrance door opens up a wonderland of mismatched furniture and scrap-yard trinkets. Replete with all the magic and slight eeriness of a Brothers Grimm fable, you can't help but feel transported into a world of play and dress up that you last indulged as a five-year-old.

Staying true to form, the night's dinner service was characteristically quirky. Dinner was served by candlelight which added to the ambiance but cleverly helped to obscure the indistinguishable textures buried in the salad starter.

On the menu for the evening was rare roast beef or red pepper and blue cheese filo pastry – a hearty, cafeteria-style main course which was perfectly satisfying but wouldn't leave you craving more. But let's face it – The Pale Blue Door isn't really for foodies and Hornecker is under no pretensions that it is a real restaurant.

The lack of polish instead lends to its charm and so it's easy to forgive the fact that the glasses aren't gleaming and the crockery and cutlery don't match. The beauty of it straddling both the camps of restaurant and art installation is that the house is opened up for all to explore during dinner. Upstairs, the bedroom hosts diners happily eating perched on the bed whilst other diners are seated around a coffee table precariously pitched on the balcony.