Strangest Places Characters Have Dined

Summer is over, which means everyone is back in town. While it's great to see everyone again, the influx of people makes getting a reservation at the best restaurants difficult. Because of this, we've eaten in some unusual joints—but none have been as strange as the places where these book characters have dined.

The Three Bears’ House in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”

Okay, we've never had a hankering for porridge, but if we did, we don’t think we would indulge our craving in a house owned by three bears (which makes us wonder how they obtained a realtor). There are many reasons why we would skip eating this food. One, we don’t know if bears are good cooks. They don’t exactly have opposable thumbs. Two, we aren’t sure if the recipes would be any good. We've seen bears root through garbage, so there might be old wrappers hanging around in their recipes. Finally, if we were caught, we would be nervous that we would be the bears’ next meal.

We salute your bravery, Goldilocks. You indulge your cravings, even in dangerous places like homes of anthropomorphic bears.

Narnia from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

There are a lot of weird things about Narnia: a lion is the ruler, women are not allowed back into the world once they get into makeup and boys, and there can be unending winter. The strangest part of Narnia? A White Witch who feeds boys Turkish delight. We know you love your sweets, Edmund, but there's no way we'd climb into a sleigh with the White Witch. Didn’t your mom tell you not to take candy from strangers?

Middle-Earth from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

We know hobbits love food (it's kind of their thing), but what and where they are willing to eat amazes us. We understand wanting to eat in the Shire or in Rivendell, but we would have no appetite on the way to Mount Doom, especially with Gollum as a companion. We're pretty sure there is no way to avoid getting disgusting dirt into the food. Also, we don’t care how satisfying it supposedly is, lembas looks totally disgusting.

Tiffany’s from Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

We love jewelry as much as the next person, but we have no desire to look at it while we are eating our meals. We especially wouldn’t want to eat our breakfast in front of a fancy store’s window. We aren’t very good at multitasking or eating while standing up. We are sure we would spill jam on our clothes. Besides, we are willing to bet that the employees would judge us. Who wants to look at disapproving faces while eating? Holly Golightly, we are glad Tiffany’s cures your “Mean Reds,” but it would only stress us out.

Milliways from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

We are willing to go great lengths to dine at a really wonderful restaurant, but we are not quite ready to go five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years into the future for it. We're really glad Zaphod and Ford had a good meal there, but we would not have left our robot friend in the past to get there. Also, you don’t know what you might accidently overhear. We wouldn’t want to hear about what happened in the past. What would we do if we found out something horrible happens to Earth during our lifetimes? In cases like that, ignorance is bliss.