Restaurants on Doctor Who

Restaurants have made many appearances on Doctor Who. Series Nine in particular had quite a few of them.

In the past, we have discussed prominent examples of food and drink on Doctor Who. With that in mind, let us now take a look at some of the many dining establishments on the program. In Series One’s ‘Rose,’ Mickey’s Auton double takes rose to a pizza establishment. The Doctor unexpectedly meets them there and fights the creature. In Series Four’s ‘Voyage of the Damned,’ guests aboard the luxury spaceship cruiser Titanic are shown enjoying themselves in the ship’s dining room. There the Doctor meets a waitress named Astrid Peth, his companion for the episode. In Series Six’s ‘The Impossible Astronaut,’ the Doctor invites Amy, Rory, and River to meet him in Utah, where they then go to a diner. Series Eight’s ‘Deep Breath‘ gave us the amusing line “Do you have a children’s menu?” which the Doctor asks at Mancini’s.

For the remainder of this article, however, we will mainly focus on the restaurants from Series Nine. As we have recently seen, it is chock full of such locations, with callbacks to previous seasons. Our first example is ‘The Woman Who Lived,’ at the end of which the Doctor, Lady Me, and Sam Swift share a celebratory drink in a tavern called Ye Swan With Two Necks. This is also where the Doctor and Lady Me discuss the nature of their relationship and how she plans to handle her immortality going forward.

In the beginning of ‘Sleep No More,’ Clara thinks that the space station looks like a Japanese restaurant. (It’s not, but is worth mentioning for the banter.) The Doctor scoffs when she asks if he has brought her to a “space restaurant,” expressing his negative feelings about prefacing things with “space.”

More from Doctor Who

In ‘Hell Bent,’ the Doctor wakes to find himself in a desert in Nevada. Acting on Clara’s instructions, a kind man takes him to a very familiar diner. It is (or appears to be) the one seen in ‘The Impossible Astronaut,’ a similarity of which the Doctor is heard to take note. Clara is working there as a waitress, but, having had his memory of her wiped, he does not recognize her. At the end of the episode, the diner is revealed to be the TARDIS which Clara and Me have stolen.

In the latest Christmas Special, ‘The Husbands of River Song,’ in a restaurant aboard the Starship Harmony and Redemption, River and the Doctor meet Scratch. He is the representative of the Shoal of the Winter Harmony, the buyers of the Halassi Androvar, a diamond which is lodged in King Hydroflax’s head. At the end of the special, the Doctor inspires a random worker, Alphonse, to build the restaurant at the Singing Towers of Darillium, in which he and River later begin their final night (lasting twenty four years) together. The Doctor funds the restaurant by giving Alphonse the Halassi Androvar.

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What are your favorite restaurants from Doctor Who? Let us know in the comments.

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