In a shuttered fairground site by the side of a motorway, in the industrial outskirts of Rotterdam, sits Europe’s newest revolving restaurant.
Opened five years ago, the UfO is the invention of 75-year-old maverick Dutch entrepreneur Hennie van der Most. A former scrap-metal merchant, Van der Most believes the sky’s the limit for his 66-seater Dutch eatery.
The UfO is not only the latest but probably the last revolving restaurant to rise in European skies. Since the start of this century, revolving restaurants are winding down.
London’s great landmark the Post Office Tower (now BT Tower and Grade II listed) first pirouetted 60 years ago, in 1965.
At 581 feet, the tower was the tallest building in Britain. Its silhouette was instantly recognisable – a symbol of the capital’s dominance as Europe’s first city.
Within a year of opening, it was starring in Doctor Who. Although it was constructed as a telecommunications transmitter, its best-known feature was Billy Butlin’s 34th-floor restaurant.
The first revolving restaurant appeared in the TV tower in Dortmund, Germany, in 1959, quickly followed by examples in Cairo, Honolulu and Thessaloniki. These tall, thin towers were a distinctive feature on postcards and tourism promotions. By the 1970s, there were over 200 revolving restaurants worldwide.
Despite being symbols of progress, their mechanisms were quite simple. A revolving restaurant operates as a large turntable with steel rotating platforms resting on the core. The lifts, kitchen and toilets are in the stationary centre. Diners are often seen chasing after the toilet from their moving platform.
Only around 100 are still working. I’ve eaten at 32 of them, from the Egon in Trondheim, Norway, to the Seri Angkasa in the Kuala Lumpur Tower. They share certain styles, often relying on 1970s décor and retro menus: half an avocado, duck à l’orange and Black Forest gâteau. Floor-to-ceiling windows, for admiring the view, are essential.
‘Not currently rotating’ is now a frequent note on former rotating restaurant websites. Rumours have spun about the BT Tower’s restaurant reopening (it’s been closed since 1985), but no concrete news yet.
It’s unlikely we will ever again be able, in Britain, to watch the world turn while eating prawn cocktail.
In Rotterdam, Hennie van der Most is on a mission to reinvent the revolving restaurant. The UfO, he says, is a new technical miracle, just as its predecessors were.
It not only turns; it rises too. The diner enters at ground level and the restaurant lifts, with you seated inside at your table, to 138 feet.
Van der Most says he’s sold patents for his design to developers in Japan and the Emirates. The revolving restaurant might yet come round again. Dea Birkett
