For those of you who may not know me, not only do I love snacks, candy and junk food, but I’m also a bit of a comic book nerd. Before Candy Critic even existed, I had been reading comic books, and I even spent a few years working in a comic book store as a teenager. When I was a comic book reader, my publishing company of choice was DC comics. I know today DC has fallen behind Marvel comics in popularity (particularly with the movies), but I don’t consider myself that hip, so I don’t feel like I have to be down with what the kids are into.
With my love and fond memories of DC comics, you can only imagine how I felt when I was in Singapore recently and I stumbled across the DC Super Heroes Café. I had not read about this place in any of the guide books, nor had I heard about other branches of this café anywhere else in the world. Allison and I were just walking through a mall (mostly to cool down) and we came across this amazing place.
I’m going to assume that this place is fully licenced by the folks at Warner Brothers, and that each piece of merchandise and the menu items are fully endorsed by the company who owns these characters. I don’t know this for a fact, but there is one detail that really made me believe that whomever built this place had permission. Most of the time when you see unlicensed things in certain countries, you find discrepancies in the details. For example, when I’ve come across unlicensed toys in the past, they often mix up the DC and Marvel universe, and you’ll see a Batman toy packaged with a Spiderman toy. This wasn’t the case at the DC Super Heroes Café, it was all on brand and very on the mark.
For the start of my review we’ll talk about how the DC Super Heroes Café is laid out and decorated. The place is split into two sections, the restaurant and the store. The store is pretty much full of all kinds of DC related toys, merchandise and art work. Some of it is very expensive, other things are more reasonable. There was nothing that you wouldn’t find in an average comic book shop, if all that comic book shop sold was DC merchandise, and no comics. The store (and parts of the restaurant) was also filled with life sized statues of various comic book characters, mostly from DC movie tie-ins. I’m not sure if these were for sale, but I’m sure the price tag was way out of my range.
The restaurant side was half take out bakery and half sit down restaurant. When we first approached the place, we just looked at the various cakes and drinks available at the front counter and didn’t really think about actually eating there. The restaurant side is not really cohesive in its design, and kind of looks like a bunch of comics from the 70s exploded everywhere (take that as you want to). The lack of cohesive design of the restaurant indicates to me that this might be the only one of these in existence, and that the person who opened this place has deep pockets to pay for licences, and not an eye for design. The lack of cohesive design actually made the place kind of fun, but also made it a little confusing.
The other thing that made this place confusing is the menu. Which we eventually decided was worth checking out after looking over the items for sale in the bakery case. When you think about a comic book café, you might think about trying some of the famous foods that might appear in comic books. I would want to eat a hamburger that Superman might enjoy, or a meal that might be served at Wayne Manor. Instead the dishes are just random diner foods with DC comics puns added into the name and all kinds of logos thrown all over them (mostly made of processed cheese and cut vegetables). Things like the “Clarks Kent’s Crevettes Carbonara” and the “Doomsday Chicken and Waffles” were what was on offer. It didn’t really feel like there was a story behind these dishes, only “clever” puns and lots of logos.
There were also several drinks and cakes with puns in the name, and many of them also had colour themes that would go with the character that was part of the pun. Or in the case of the cakes, they were decorated with logos and colours, and some designs that would associate with the characters. I will give this place credit; they made some deep cuts when it came to the characters they chose to associate with the foods. Most restaurants would only use the characters that might have made it to the mainstream or in the movies, but this place had no trouble dealing with some of the more obscure characters including Bizarro and Mr Mxyzptlk.
I also like the fact
that the restaurant was clearly interested in the comics and not the
movies. The walls were decorated with comic book pages featuring the
origins of some of the more popular DC characters. The chairs and the
tables were all decorated with character logos from the comics. The
colours everywhere were just bright and comic book like. Visually
this restaurant was a feast for the eyes, but the food…
As described above, the
food is basic diner food, it’s nothing fancy and nothing that
creative. I ordered the Doomsday Chicken and Waffles, and Allison got
the Batman Burger (that came in an amazing box). Both are meals were
fine, but not amazing. I felt like the chicken and waffles was made
by someone who had never actually eaten chicken and waffles before.
It came with maple syrup on the side, but was already covered in
nacho cheese sauce. I’m not an expert in chicken and waffles, but
I’m pretty sure nacho cheese is not a part of it. Allison enjoyed
her burger, but felt it was a little overpriced for what it was.
The experience of eating at this place is far more fun than the food itself. I feel like this place was designed by someone who really loves DC Super Heroes, but doesn’t really understand how to tie it into a restaurant. As I mentioned before, it was not cheap. I feel like we were paying for the licensing of the characters more than the food (if I find out that this place is not licensed than there’s no excuse at all). I’m glad I tried it once, but I don’t see myself ever going back, except maybe just to browse the store.
CC
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