Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Guests in The Spot 625’s virtual reality dining room venture along snowy mountains, golf courses and beaches before dinner is served. The various settings are created through the placement of screens and projectors that illuminate the dining room and create the immersive experience.

Ryan Lynch, co-owner of Quantum Virtual Entertainment, compared the experience to a concert in that it utilizes all five senses.

“In a lot of ways, it’s all sensory,” Lynch said. “We’re talking about stimulating. Plus, we’re adding a taste element to it so it really opens up a multitude of senses.”

The Spot 625 opened this fall in Syracuse with the intent to bring a lot more to the table than just food. The new restaurant proposes a combination between food and virtual reality, creating an immersive dining experience like no other in the area. Guests purchase tickets to the VR experience and order their meal before arriving at The Spot through its website. Food options vary from pasta to beef, from chicken to seafood. Customers should note any dietary restrictions.

Quantum Virtual Entertainment, owned by both Lynch and Gregory Nies, teamed up to open The Spot 625 and create a virtual reality dining experience in a secluded room of the restaurant. Lynch and Nies met for the first time in October of 2019 in Syracuse at one of Lynch’s pop-ups, where Nies demonstrated interest in the project that combines a narrative story with a full dinner.

The experience begins as soon as the guests walk into the room — projections cover the walls, tables and plates. The story, “Sognatore,” Italian for “The Dreamer,” is then introduced. Two characters, Luigi and Pasquale — narrated by local comedians Lou Greco and Carlo Russo — take the guests with them as they fall asleep at the table and find themselves traveling through multiple landscapes.

As the characters announce the appetizers, the lights turn on and plates arrive with the first tasting, including a salad and vegetable dumplings. After everyone has finished eating, the story resumes, and the guests are taken back into Luigi and Pasquale’s dream once again.

As the dream comes to an end, the characters finally wake up and acknowledge the guests for the first time, saying they look like “one big family” while signaling that the main dish is going to be served.

Lynch said he first got the idea for a virtual dining experience abroad.

“I saw one several years ago in France that blew me away,” Lynch said. “I’ve always loved production and creating visual effects and that sort of thing, and the whole idea of marrying the two arts — the art of food and culinary and the visual aspect of things — was always appealing to me.”

When the restaurant opened this fall, Nies said the pandemic brought its own challenges. Like many other restaurant owners, Nies and Lynch were faced with uncertainty and instability, as it became impossible to predict if the restaurant would be able to stay open during the course of the pandemic.

Despite the challenges, both owners explained that, as of now, the recently opened restaurant has been a success and that they are excited to see where it takes them in the future. They have a lot of ideas, they said, including introducing movement to make the experience even more immersive.

“We’d like to take it to a place where we can also involve motion, and actual physical feeling such as some sort of downward-upward movement force on the body, almost make it like a ride,” Lynch said.

Though the restaurant just opened this fall, the owners take joy in seeing people of all ages enjoying the immersive experience.
Noah Rosenblatt | Contributing Writer

The cofounders said they are also planning some fall events, including a virtual reality wine tasting which would bring customers to vineyards.

As the Syracuse restaurant grows in popularity, Lynch and Nies feel confident about its developments into the future and its impact on the community, they said. The owners are excited about the diverse demographic that has been attending the restaurant since its opening.

“We’re getting everything from the four-year-old coming in and enjoying it up to the 90-year-old that’s coming in and sitting at the table,” Lynch said. “The most enjoyable thing is seeing the response to our efforts in the past and the excitement, and to some extent the nervousness because people don’t really know what they’re walking into.”

Published on September 12, 2021 at 10:41 pm

Contact Noah: norosenb@syr.edu