Medicinal Nightlife in Asia

Buzzfeed notes a new trend among Asian nightlife establishments: the medical theme. First is Taipei's inscrutably named DS Music Restaurant, where staff are dressed as doctors and nurses, and beer is available via an "IV drip" that hangs on a pole next to your table. Singapore ups the ante considerably with the enormous entertainment and eat-o-plex called the Clinic, a 13-room, 15,000-square-foot monstrosity divided into two bars, two clubs, and a restaurant. Several of the Clinic's spaces are given over to "concept rooms" featuring art and furnishings geared to particular themes ("couples" or "caffeine" among others); the restaurant, which sports golden wheelchairs as seating, specializes in madfood science (or "molecular gastronomy") like the kind popular in Spain and Chicago's Moto.

Then there's a bar in China's Shenzen -- for some reason, unnamed by the state newspaper that originally reported it -- that has also begun dressing its barmaids as nurses, with the added bonus of having them dispense drinks from test tubes and giant hypodermics. Furthermore, the same proprietor is "planning another theme of female pirates." Really now, hasn't this cosplay thing gone far enough, between the maids and the pinafores and butlers, not to mention the toilet-restaurant fad that seems to have begun in Taipei as well? In fact, Taipei has also seen the prison-themed restaurant come and go. And perhaps best/worst of all, they were allegedly the first to come up with the idea of a Holocaust-themed restaurant -- a Hitleriffic theme later picked up by establishments in Mumbai and some unnamed Korean metropolis. All of which makes the latest enthusiasm for medical venues seem innocuous by comparison.

DS Music Restaurant [via Buzzfeed]
The Clinic [via Buzzfeed]
Bartender girls in nurse outfits [China Daily]
Hitler-Themed Restaurant [Nerve Endings Firing Away]
Freaky Weird Hitler-Themed Saloon [VolumeOne]

-- Chris Mohney