In Japan, a restaurant is transforming Covid-19 protection into a new dining experience.

In Tokyo, a restaurant has converted the concept of keeping clients safe from covid into a full-fledged dining experience. Diners enjoy a special cuisine created with fermented ingredients while seated beneath the soothing light of a massive traditional lantern handcrafted by an ancestor. It’s a really serious concept… and it’s not cheap! Restaurants and taverns were closed in the early days of covid. When they reopened, they frequently incorporated anti-covid-19 remedies, such as screens or perspex barriers between clients.

Some designers began to look outside the box, proposing greenhouse-like structures, transparent domes, and other innovations. What was once a simple way to attract people back into restaurants is now a new dining experience that can be tried at the table.

The luxury hotel brand Hoshinoya is providing diners the option to have a meal under a giant dome mimicking the renowned Japanese paper and bamboo lanterns in one of its Tokyo locations. The ability of the Land of the Rising Sun to shrewdly blend traditional customs with current technologies is well-known. The Tokyo restaurant gives more than a passing reference to these lanterns, which are still manufactured by Kojima Shoten in Kyoto, in this unique experience. The old imperial capital’s famed establishment first opened its doors towards the end of the 18th century. It agreed to fabricate the restaurant’s enormous lanterns out of vinyl instead of paper so that guests could see each other.

Each “dome” stands 102 metres tall and has a 75-centimeter diameter. In addition, the restaurant has designed a special welcoming ceremony for clients, who enter a 40-square-meter chamber dedicated just to the experience.

The menu is also a part of the experience, in addition to being protected by a large lamp. Hoshinoya has created a menu focused on fermented items prepared using French techniques. And it’s a notion with a price tag of 21,780 yen per person, or roughly $190.