It sounds like a dream–or a nightmare. You’re sitting at a table high above the ground, feet dangling in the breeze as you cut into beef medallions and sip fine wine, watching the clouds roll over the skyline.
For the past several years, that scenario has been a reality for guests of Dinner in the Sky, a Belgium-based company that hoists adventurous diners at tables suspended from cranes for a night of vichyssoise with a soup-on of vertigo. Early this year, the American franchisee of Dinner in the Sky is launching the brand’s first permanent location, in Las Vegas.
If it sounds like a publicity stunt gone haywire, well, essentially it is. The concept was created in 2007 when David Ghysels, owner of a marketing and communications company, teamed with bungee-jumping impresario Stefan Kerkhofs to create an aerial dinner for the Jeunes Restaurateurs d’Europe association. Word spread about the wacky high-wire act, and the duo soon began receiving calls from around the world asking how to replicate it. That’s when they got the idea to start franchising the concept.