Naked restaurant plans permanent London site

Over 46,000 people joined a waiting list for tickets to The Bunyadi,​ which offered guests ‘true liberation’ by letting them dine in the nude.

Now its founder Seb Lyall, the man behind London’s Breaking Bad-themed bar and Owl Café, is planning to open a permanent location.

Split in to naked and clothed sections, the restaurant served raw food and ran without gas and electricity throughout its June to August run.

But despite jokes about the dangers of hot soup spillages and guests fending off unwanted advances, Lyall told BigHospitality the restaurant had been incident-free and praised the attitude of its diners.

“We’re talking about people who have lived through the basic pyramid of life who don’t see naked bodies as sexual,” he said.

“The quality of that community was amazing, so now it’s my job to keep it there and bring it back.”

Social experiment​

As well as appealing to the nearly four million naturists in the UK, Lyall said the restaurant was a success with a younger, liberal crowd.

Nearly three quarters of The Bunyadi’s customers were around 30 years old, and just over two thirds were women.

“It’s not only about taking your clothes off, it’s kind of a social experiment,” said Lyall.

“Imagine a place where you go out for a nice meal and we encourage you to dress down rather than dress up, it’s liberating."

New ideas​

While further details of The Bunyadi’s return remain in the works, Lyall is still on the hunt for a permanent site for his Breaking Bad-themed bar ABQ,​ as well as launching new pop-up ideas.

“We’ve got a pipeline of four different concepts,” he said. “Some of them are very unique, some are less so but more scaleable.

“But the focus for the next three to six months is to launch ABQ as a permanent site in London, and also [launch] Bunyadi in London as well.”