I’m about to take a bite from a slice of Key lime pie at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium when a host named Jacques stops by. He looks at my plate and tells me it’s a good thing the desserts weren’t made to his specifications. If it had been up to him, my pie would be filled with mini metal keys.
That’s because Jacques is a robot. Or, rather, an actor playing a robot in a costume made of random clamps, clasps and metal hands, with leather overalls in various shades of cocoa and a bowler cap. His voice, filtered through an unseen distortion device, sounds a little tinny. If the innards of a vintage timepiece had been blown up, fashioned into human form and given a workman’s coating, it’d probably look something like Jacques. Ask to take his picture, and he’ll likely apologize for blinking, though he has no pupils or eyelids. His eyes are constructed out of metal cups.
When he’s not making the rounds from table to table, often with his female pal Penelope, the purported proprietor of Toothsome, Jacques is seen on screens — meant to be windows — in the back of the restaurant, hovering over the action amid oversized gears and tubes.
Jacques the robot, left, with his traveling companion Penelope, the fictional proprietor of the new steampunk-themed restaurant Toothsome Chocolate Emporium at Universal Studios’ CityWalk.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
One’s tolerance for being interrupted by a fake robot while dining out is likely dependent on a few factors. The presence of children in the party likely helps, as does one’s feelings about formative trips to theme parks. But prime weekend reservations tend to fill quickly at Toothsome, the new steampunk-themed restaurant in CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood. Is it an indication that there’s a dearth of family-friendly theatricality around the dinner table? Or a sign that the themed restaurant, which enjoyed an era of expansion throughout the 1980s…