The ravages of time can transform once-thriving restaurants into spooky time capsules of their former selves, with rusty kitchens, crumbling walls and piles of rotting rubbish. Join us on a tour of a ghostly floating restaurant in Hanoi, a lonely lakeside rest stop in Switzerland and many more eerily abandoned eateries. These deserted diners, forgotten food courts and ruined restaurants certainly won’t be making the Michelin Guide.
Click or scroll through our gallery as we countdown the most incredible eerie and abandoned restaurants.
We've based our ranking on the eeriness of each location and on the opinions of our well-travelled team. The list is unavoidably subjective.
There's something so fascinating about a fast food restaurant that's been left to rot. This McDonald's in Riccione, Italy had seemingly only been abandoned in 2017, but by the time these photos were taken in 2021, it already looked like it was well on the way to being reclaimed by nature. And if nature doesn't do the job first, it seems that local artists soon will. After all, graffiti obscures the view on most of the exterior windows.
In this photo of the main dining room, the chairs remained stacked on the tables as if the staff expected to come back the next day. In fact, when Tesori Abbandonati – which curates urban photography on its social media channels – posted a video about the place in 2022, they claimed the site closed in 2017 for refurbishment and then never opened its doors again. The group said it might have had something to do with another, more popular McDonald's being located nearby.
Inside the kitchen, what must be modern and expensive kit – everything from burger grills and warming trays to fryers for crisping up those all-important French fries – have been left to rot, while cables and pipes hang from the roof. Grease and grime cover the floor, which you imagine once had to be kept in pristine condition.
The Union Hotel in Flemington, New Jersey was once home to the 'trial of the century' when the jury and the global media stayed in its rooms while the Charles Lindbergh case was being tried nearby. While that was a boom time for the hotel and its restaurant, it couldn't sustain the momentum as the decades rolled on. It stopped renting out rooms in the 1970s, and the restaurant finally closed in 2008.
The restaurant remained abandoned and ghostly for 16 years until, in September 2024, plans were unveiled to dramatically revamp and restore the hotel and the Flemington area. Under these new plans, the first floor of the Union Hotel will become a new restaurant, and the entire building will be joined to an adjacent pub. The two floors above the restaurant will then include guest rooms in the $6 million (£4.3 million) renovation.
The Village Inn was a Delaware institution at one point, loved by locals for over 60 years. The restaurant even won awards – this photo (taken in 2015 when it was long-since shuttered) shows a decaying sign on the side of the building, advertising that it was awarded 'Best Underrated Classic' by Best of Delaware (annual awards run by newspaper Delaware Today) in 2006. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the diner from closing soon after in 2008.
In better days, The Village Inn was known as an upscale seafood joint, and photos of the menu reveal it also served a range of other dishes, from old-school wedge salads to mushroom ravioli. In this eerie photo of the restaurant's main dining room, the ceiling has fallen in and there is debris all over the place, but the wooden tables, vintage lighting and abandoned crockery give you an idea of what the place once looked like.
According to reports, one former owner, Robert Thomas, sold up in 2004 after Route 1 started rerouting passing travellers away from The Village Inn's doors, drastically reducing footfall. The restaurant could never recover – a similar fate struck another local eatery around the same time – and the building was left to fall into disrepair afterwards. Almost two decades later, the building and lot remains up for sale.
Imagine enjoying your Big Mac with the wind in your hair on the open water. Well, for visitors to Vancouver’s Expo 86, this unusual fantasy became a brief reality. The McBarge – AKA the Friendship 500 – is a 187-foot (57m), two-storey boat that was once used as a floating McDonald’s restaurant during the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication in Vancouver, Canada. It was moored at False Creek and served 12,000 customers a day – although it was never destined for a life as a true-blue McDonald's restaurant.
The idea was that the McBarge would show off technology and design innovations. But apart from its brief use by McDonald’s at Expo 86, the McBarge stayed moored in False Creek passing from one buyer to the next for two decades. Its cavernous insides are now characterised by missing windows and rusted staircases, with not a Happy Meal or a Big Mac in sight. Unsurprisingly, the eerie interior of the vessel attracted the attention of Hollywood in 2004, when Marvel rented it as a spooky filming location for the superhero movie Blade: Trinity.
Over the years there have been many false starts in the McBarge’s restoration, including the possibility of using it as a homeless shelter and a failed crowdfunding campaign to convert it into an attraction called the Deep Ocean Discovery Centre. The latest plan by owner Howard Meakin was to transform the deserted boat into a seafood restaurant. The decommissioned floating McDonald’s is currently anchored at Maple Ridge, British Columbia, awaiting its fate.
In its heyday, The Grill Café Walensee was somewhat groundbreaking for a motorway eatery. Opened in 1968 to cater for hungry travellers driving along the newly built A3 autobahn, it’s a stunning example of post-war Modernist architecture. The once majestic rest stop and restaurant had a picturesque terrace overlooking Lake Walensee and was a go-to place for visitors and locals to meet.
However, an expansion of the autobahn in 1986 meant the rest area was only accessible from the east to the west, leading to the restaurant’s gradual demise. Landlord Angelo Mätzler was eventually forced to close the restaurant in 2003, and it has been empty and derelict ever since. The Liechtenstein School of Architecture stated in 2023 that the structure is due to be demolished in the coming years.
Even celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay couldn’t save this family-run hotel and restaurant after it was given a makeover on a 2006 episode of his TV show Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Just two years later, in 2008, it closed for good – and it's been abandoned ever since, with constant vandalism to the property prompting councillors to recommend it for demolition. Former owner Daniela Bayfield, who featured in the show, attempted to reopen it as a shelter for refugees, but she sadly passed away in 2019.
During its peak in the 1970s and 1980s La Gondola had 20 bedrooms and a 70-seat restaurant and was considered one of the city’s most fashionable eating spots. Photographed here in 2017, the kitchen was covered in grime with rust spreading across the appliances. In 2023, planning officials halted a proposal to knock the building down and transform it into homes in favour of demolition. A massive fire broke out at the property in August 2024, further throwing the plan into disarray.
Diners looking for a taste of ancient Egypt in Texas were treated to mystifying magic shows and flashy entertainment at Magic Island, a grand two-storey restaurant along the Southwest Freeway in Houston. From 1984 until 2008, the dining spot was known for the gold pharaoh head atop its roof and was decked out in ornate Ancient Egyptian–style furnishings. Sadly, when Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, the building caught fire and had to close. It stood empty for a decade.
Before its demise, some of the features of the building included a grand theatre, gold doors, red carpet, an enormous chandelier, murals, hieroglyphics and Egyptian-style mummy statues. In 2018, a new owner, neurologist Mohammed Athari, announced plans to restore the 22,000-square-foot (2,044 sqm) property to its former glory. There were no updates until March 2024, when new general manager Michael Loneman declared Magic Island would open in the summer of 2024, but that was the last anybody heard of it.
The only restaurant on our list that’s an approved tourist spot, this startling building sits 820 feet (249m) above the Monsanto Forest Park and is an iconic part of Lisbon’s skyline. Designed by architect Chaves Costa, the Restaurante Panorâmico de Monsanto was opened in 1968 (although the actual restaurant part of the building didn't open until 1970) to cater for the rising upper classes of the city. It had five floors, complete with 270-degree panoramic views.
The restaurant didn’t last and has had multiple uses over the years, including as a bingo hall and a nightclub, before finally being deserted in 2001. After decades of abandonment, during which it became a spot for urban explorers and local graffiti artists, the restaurant was finally converted into a municipal viewpoint in 2017. The well-preserved concrete shell was made safe for visitors, and what remained of the stunning floor-to-ceiling windows were removed.
Today the building still contains original artwork, including painted murals by Luís Dourdil and tile panels by Manuela Madureira, and is a trendy urban art destination. It has also become a popular events space and even a backdrop for wedding photography. The former restaurant can be accessed for free every day between the hours of 9am and 6pm.
This gloomy former police station once housed one of Edinburgh’s most unusual spots: an Armenian restaurant that was known for its eccentric owner and unpredictable opening times. The near-mythical eatery opened in 1979, and locals recall getting intensely quizzed by the owner before they accepted a reservation – if the telephone was answered. The building has been abandoned since 2011 and is currently on the Buildings At Risk Register.
Tucked away on the ninth floor of Montreal’s former Eaton department store, the stunning Art Deco Eaton's Ninth Floor Restaurant once served afternoon tea to the city’s most fashionable diners. Opened in 1931, the 500-seat eatery was famous for its opulent food and ostentatious interiors and was considered a huge part of Montreal’s cultural heritage. It originally shuttered when the Eaton store chain went bust in 1999 and lay abandoned for 24 years.
Designed to evoke the dining rooms of the great ocean liners of the 20th century, the restaurant’s interior – including the 9th-floor corridor, pictured – was remarkably well-preserved. The venue’s glamorous customers were even the subject of a 1998 documentary, Les Dames du 9e (The Ladies of the 9th). Happily, after years of careful conservation work, the landmark reopened to the public in May 2024. The freshly renamed Le 9e houses a new restaurant, Restaurant Île de France, which aims to honour the past and look to the future with its refined cuisine.
Japan is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a Western-themed amusement park with decaying animatronic cowboys, but this incredible relic used to be a buzzing tourist attraction in the town of Nikko, 70 miles north of Tokyo. In 2006, the park announced it would be closed for a few months for maintenance, but it never opened again. Explorers were later able to capture sights like this deserted restaurant and a bar stocked with dusty bottles.
Nikko’s Western Village was built in the 1970s and, at its peak, had several restaurants, an arcade, a live Wild West show and reproductions of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. In these pictures from 2017, it looks more like the set for the 1973 sci-fi/Western film Westworld. Visitors to the deserted park found human-sized teddy bears decked out in Stars & Stripes clothing and broken animatronic models in strange poses.
As well as being a much-loved amusement park for many decades, Western Village was also used as a film set on occasion. But despite heavy investment from the owner, whose additions included a church imported from California and a replica of Mount Rushmore, the park simply couldn’t compete with changing tastes, especially with fierce competition from Tokyo DisneySea and Universal Studios Japan, both of which opened in 2001.
Bob's Cafe was a popular stop for travellers on England's M1 motorway for roughly 40 years before it fell into disrepair. Locals in Rugby fondly remember it as a greasy spoon café serving hearty full English breakfasts to passing truck drivers. It shut its doors for good in 1996 and was gradually reclaimed by nature over the next 17 years. In the end, the site was bought, restored and eventually reopened as a car dealership in 2014.
Once a full and thriving shopping hub with a carousel, a nautical-themed food court and more than 200 stores, Forest Fair Mall never really reached its full potential. One of the biggest shopping centres in Ohio at 1.5 million square feet (139,355 sqm) in size, it opened in the late 1980s but was plagued with bankruptcies and failed rebranding efforts. It underwent millions of dollars' worth of renovations in the early 1990s and again in 2004 but struggled to keep its shops from shuttering.
Kiosks at the food court are closed for good, even though some are in such good condition they appear as though they've just closed for the day. Previous tenants included Burger King, Chipotle, Red Lobster and The Old Spaghetti Factory. In December 2022, the crumbling interior of the mall was closed to the public due to fire code violations. Now there's just one tenant left (Kohl's), and it's only allowed to stay open because it has a separate entrance. But the future could be bright.
In June 2024, Developer Rob Smyjunas told newspaper the Cincinnati Enquirer he was in negotiations to purchase Cincinnati Mall (the latest name for Forest Fair Mall). His big idea was to turn the Forest Park portion of the space into a 'major retailer food store', including a couple of huge sites specifically for food and entertainment. The city of Forest Park wasn't immediately bowled over by the plans and little has happened since then.
This abandoned aqua park swallowed by the desert makes for an eerie sight, especially against the backdrop of the golden sand dunes and turquoise waters of the South African coast. Built in 1991, the Macassar Beach Pavilion used to be a popular resort that attracted droves of families from across the region. The faded blue and green food kiosks, derelict wooden cafés and buried water slides give a hint of its former glory.
The derelict water park is perched on the edge of the Macassar Dunes Conservation Area, a stretch of coast that is particularly exposed to the elements, so it’s no surprise that upkeep of the resort proved tricky for the owners. It eventually closed due to financial difficulties and is slowly but surely succumbing to nature as the dunes move up and over the existing restaurants and buildings. Visitors can still see crumbling concession stands, swimming pools and water flumes filled with sand.
Despite the crumbling paint and rusty, run-down exterior, you can still appreciate the retro charms of Tom’s Diner in these images taken in 2014. The Silk City–style dining cart, built in the early 1940s, used to sit on Route 46 in Ledgewood and was operated by the Seretis family from 1958 until the 2004 death of owner Frank Seretis. After years of efforts by the public to preserve the beloved burger spot for future generations, it was demolished in 2021.
In this image, the menu above the counter shows what breakfast dishes locals would have ordered – pancakes, French toast, omelettes and corned beef hash – along with how much they cost at the time of closing. The diner even achieved iconic status in 1983 when it was used as the setting for Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time' music video.
American entrepreneur Horace Bullard was famous for plunging huge amounts of money into revitalising Coney Island with various projects, including setting up Kansas Fried Chicken when he was unable to secure a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. He made his fortune from the chain, which had 18 locations across the country – including one on the ground floor of the Shore Theater in 1979, pictured here.
The restaurant chain closed decades ago, but passersby have managed to photograph the inside. Tables and chairs are strewn across the room and bits of the ceiling are on the floor, but the menu is still readable, with shrimp baskets and a 15-piece bucket of chicken among the items on offer. A property company bought the old theatre from Kansas Fried Chicken in 2016 with plans to turn it into a boutique hotel. Work started in April 2023.
Built in the late 1950s, this futuristic building resembles a giant flying saucer and once housed a family restaurant with panoramic views of the Petrópolis mountains. Known as ‘the disco’, it was developed to coincide with the opening of the busy BR-040 that cut through the mountain range. However, business faded when the highway became a one-way system, and it's been abandoned since the 1970s.
For years, the ‘ghost ships’ of Hanoi’s Tay Ho added an eerie mystery to the region. The picturesque lake was blighted by empty floating restaurants and pleasure boats, rotting in abandonment. These once-majestic vessels were banned by local authorities in 2016 in a bid to improve water quality. Due to the huge cost of dismantling them, many were simply left to rust, and it wasn’t until 2022 that the government finally intervened and demolished them.
Located in the town of Woolgoolga on the New South Wales coast, this haunting spot was once a bustling multi-purpose tourist emporium that catered to the town’s significant Sikh population. The Raj Mahal Indian Cultural Centre included an Indian restaurant, a museum, a spice shop, a scale model replica of the Taj Mahal and two striking elephant statues in the forecourt.
In 2007, vandals attacked the landmark, destroying priceless items including a 500-year-old manuscript, and repeated arson attempts over the years left the iconic elephants in a poor state. After years of neglect and various failed planning applications, the cultural centre was eventually reduced to rubble in 2013 to make way for a new supermarket.
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Last updated by Luke Paton.