would you eat in a graveyard restaurant?

[karyn]

from metro uk

It's all gravey for cemetery restaurant
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The bustling New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmadabad, India is famous for its milky tea, its buttery rolls... and the graves between the tables.

Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn't know who is buried in the cafe floor. Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins, and that's enough for him.

'The graveyard is good luck,' Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. 'Our business is better because of the graveyard.'

The graves are painted green, stand about shin high, and every day the manager decorates each of them with a single dried flower. They're scattered randomly across the restaurant - one up front next to the cash register, three in the middle next to a table for two, four along the wall near the kitchen.

The waiters know the floor plan and have mastered the delicate dance of shimmying between graves with a tray of hot tea in each hand. 'We're used to it,' said waiter Kayyum Sheikh.

'There's nothing odd about it,' he added, with only partially accuracy.

The restaurant dates to the 1950s - before honking traffic and tall buildings surrounded the site - when K.H. Mohammed opened a tea stall outside the cemetery, said Nair, who helped run the place and became Mohammed's partner. Business was good, and the stall kept expanding until its tin walls encircled the graves. Mohammed died in 1996.

In India, where its high population density can lead to overcrowding problems, it's common for cemeteries to serve multiple purposes, said Varis Alvi, a retired professor in Ahmadabad. Newcomers to cities set up tents inside graveyards, and businesses set up stalls next to graves.

'Graveyards in India are never scary places,' Alvi said. 'We don't have a nice literature of horror stories so we don't have much fear of ghosts.'

Some, though, say the restaurant is disrespectful.

'They should maintain the decorum of the graveyard,' said a history professor who asked that his name be withheld. When asked why he didn't want to be identified, he said, 'Because I have tea there.'

[Camby Savelle]

what?!!!

I have to eat there before I die. HAVE TO!

[antiseptic fashion]

from metro uk

It's all gravey for cemetery restaurant
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
'

So good.... is there an address?

[Mr Karl]

I'm not into tea so I'll pass on that one

[BookOfFaeye]

I used to go to the cemetery where my great great aunt was buried and sit on her beautiful red brick tomb and eat water crackers with cavier and creamcheese, and drink bottled water from Mortons Market in Sarasota. I loved it. It was my alone time not to be completely alone. It was zen and beautiful. I loved it. I miss it terribly every now and then.

[SyntheticShock]

As long as the deceased weren't on the menu, I would.