The whole hipster concept has become so popular these days, even restaurants are trying to do it. Unfortunately, being hipster isn't that easy and just one thing gone wrong can make you easily go from hipster to complete disaster.
Below, Bored Panda has put together a list of hipster restaurants that went way too far with food serving. From serving food in a shoe to serving coffee in a carrot - some of these "hipster" ideas are so ridiculous, it's hilarious! Keep on scrolling to take a look and don't forget to vote for your favorites.
This post may include affiliate links.
Afternoon Tea In A Bookcase
Cake Cups
The Guy At The Table Next To Me Has Just Been Served The Most Sensational Scotch Egg. It Comes In A Trophy
I'm not even mad, that's amazing. It's a trofy for the food thingie. Legit.
For the food thingie ahaha lol /// love when people word things like they are so lost lol i do it all the time lel
Load More Replies...
Look... don't get me wrong to me photos of food equals walkers. But I gotta say that is a damn fine looking scotch egg... yeah I'm with Vlad... not even mad!
OK, this one is not a fail at all... I'd be delighted to be served a Scotch egg like that.
Can we take them home,.. the trophies for actually eating a meal and being tidy somehow. Must say it looks delicious.
I'd 'kill' for a Scotch Egg, but where in Melbourne, AUSTRALIA do you find one? [preferably in the NE 'burbs]. Nowhere! I know, they're easy enough to make I suppose, BUT I've banned myself from the kitchen for 'health reasons'.
Is this at the Avon Gorge Hotel because I work there and I've legit served someone this exact scotch egg
OK. I had seen some things but this... First of all, I want it. It looks delicious. And the trophy saying "World's Best Scotch Egg" adds the final touch. It is like the chef said "Look at my egg. Eat it. You will love it or I will commit suicide." while sitting on armchair smoking cigar.
It is boiled egg, covered in grounded meat (and sometimes in bacon too according to internet receipts) and then covered again in flour, eggs and breadcrumbs (maybe crushed cornflakes would for too) and baked (or fired).
Load More Replies... 
That does look like a really tasty scotch egg! All the scotch eggs I've ever had have had really small hard overlooked yolks, but the yolk in this one looks sooo nice!
This is tongue in cheek clever... I mean it's a Scotch Eggie... come on.... it's humorous.
Well it actually takes a certain amount of skill to cook a scotch egg properly without hardening the yolk, so I reckon that actually deserves a trophy.
That egg is enormous. I wonder what kind it is...ostrich? Whatever it is, it looks crazy delicious.
I think this one is great. It does look like an incredible scotch egg (but just how gigantic is that egg?? Is that fake? Or from a goose?)
The Final Boss Of This Sub
Meat Served On A Barbie Doll
Fish And Chips On A Ferris Wheel. This Is Not A Drill. We Repeat, This Is Not A Drill
We Recall The Time A Customer Ordered An Orange Juice And Was Presented With This
Breakfast Shovel
All That For A Strawberry Cut In Half
More That Moment When Everyone Else Gets Plates And Your Dessert Arrives On A Porcelain Horse Head
Terrible Bun: Meat Ratio And Precariously Tall Burger On A Skillet On A Board With A Sword Through It
I Only Like My Olives To Be Served On A Silver Spoon And Placed Beneath A Miniature Olive Tree
Coffee In A Carrot
This Salad
Some poor bus boy has to fill hundreds of rubber gloves with water then put in the freezer every day, he's pondering his life now.
This Is Not What I Expected When I Ordered A Caesar Salad
Chicken Tikka Staircase And Chutney Cupboard At The Tourist Janpath Hotel, New Delhi
The Food Is Somewhere In There
Drink Served In A Lightbulb On A Flamingo Inner Tube
Stairway To Sushi
Chips On A Washing Line
Please Serve My Mushrooms In A Small Garden That You Bring To My Table
We Take A Solemn Moment To Recall The Mini Ones Served On Barbed Wire
Seems like to much of a liability to have barbed wire in front of customers
Iced Drink In A Bag With A Straw
Waiter: Sir, now we're out of god damn glasses... Chef: Well...see those bags?
Small Town Restaurant In Thailand. I Don't Even Know What To Put Here
Shawarma On A Bicycle
"How Was Your Meal?" "Chips Were Rubbish."
What The Hell Is This
I Went To The Craziest Restaurant In The World
That's disgusting. Nobody knows what chemicals are in those pads. Like "fresh-smell" stuff.
Grilled Cheese Suspended On Metal Hook Above Bowl Of Soup
First Course Of A Tasting Menu: Citrus In Sugar. The Waiter Said, "Hold Out Your Hand"
When you're out of plates and you improvise, but end up making your restaurant look hipster as fu*k.
A Dog Bowl. How Trendy
Fritters Served In A Gelatin Shoe
My Sister Blocked Me On Instagram For Commenting "Wtf Is That Plating"
Waiter: Sir, we have 10 plates and 20 customers,..what do we do? Chef: I have an idea.
This Caged Cocktail
"Would You Like Your Egg Boiled, Poached Or Scrambled?" "Boiled And Balanced On A 15mm Isolating Ball Valve, Please."
Gotta Love Tiny Pixar Lamps With Your Dinner
Carrot Cake Served On Round Mirrors
Mini Beef Wellington Served On A Guillotine
How do they get away with safety? After all my years in the industry, I know people aren't smart enough to handle sharp objects in restaurants.
Sweets Served On An Oversized Piece Of Lego
*Dies Of Embarrassment Looking At This Hipster Food*
Mini Picnic Table. Where Is My Plate?
The End Of The World Is Nigh
Spaghetti Held Up On A Platform To Make It Cold And Hard To Eat
Lot of thought put into this one then...how to put your customers off eating there.
Wimbledon.... Sigh
This look like an easy way to overthrow all the meal by accidentally kicking the racket handle.
He *Does* Have A Plate. Small Victories
Bacon Washing-Line At Trump Hotel In Washington Dc
Yall Would Love Alinea. Here's There Signature Dessert, Served On The Table
Deconstructed Spaghetti Bowl
Frozen Beet And Strawberry. In A Tube Of Lipstick
Note: this post originally had 183 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Ok, so little reminder for any restaurant owner that wants to be creative: Shoes are not plates, stones are not plates, sticks are not plates, toilets bowl(!!!!!) are not plates, customers hands are not plates either and if it's not sanitary, than you can't put food on it!
Everything in here makes me angry. These lame attempts at innovative cuisine are beyond ridiculous.
I feel sorry for people working there.... Customers are shocked once, but the workers deal with this cr*p every day. They assemble it, wash it, and take complaints to the things they're too shy to serve from the start. u_u
Indeed. Many pics made me wonder who carries around the heavy brick/stone/marble "bridges" and flee market stuff used to appear "authentic".
Load More Replies...
I'd be sending 99,8% of them back and get me a real meal or a effing plate. Wtf?
And, yes, let's serve food on any old plastic. Especially hot and greasy food that'll absorb the softeners and other chemicals.
Motto of these restaurants: we want to be hip so we serve your food in the most ridiculous way and we absolutely don't give a sh*t how you eat it in a decent and non-spilling matter... here's your shocking check!
Most of the restaurant just got out of plates and glasses so they started to use anything else as serving boards.
For f**k's sake, cant people just serve food on a plate? I get they're trying to be creative and all, but if someone served me food like that I would send it back and ask for a proper plate. No way I'm eating out of a urinal. Or off of bricks. Or a shovel. Or having a drink out of a plastic bag or out of a watering can. I wasn't raised in a f*****g barn.
i enjoy anyone being creative outside the box but we are dealing with food here. no one i know wants to be served food out of a shoe or someones hand! can't they use recycled things that aren't related to gross smelly things like an altoids canister for minty deserts or a picture frame with cool images related to the food as a plate. come on people!
You just came up with 2 good ideas which are 1,000 times better the ones on this list.
Load More Replies...
#19 is my absolute favourite for ironic content. The drinks are supposed to be zany and fun, yet every single soul in the picture looks utterly suicidal!!! Happyfunba...0e900b.jpg 
"Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at."
Load More Replies... 
Some ideas were clever, and some others you want to scream, "How is any of this sanitary!?!?!" Lots of health code violations on here.
Well, some of them are really ridiculous. To be fair though, a few are actually from specially themed restaurants, so customers go there in order to experience something like that. And the drink in the wooden box is in fact an old traditional way to drink Japanese sake. Nothing fancy about that. And they don't leak. I have some of them at home, and the wood gives a nice aroma to the alcohol. Anyways. I agree though that food is for eating and savouring flavour-wise, not to play with.
"Below, Bored Panda has put together a list..." Aka, they went to WeWantPlates subreddit and stole pictures from the posts there. Such journalism, such integrity, such hard work, wow. Im sure it took a lot of effort to copy the images from there to here lmao
#151 is basically proof in the title already. Such a good job Viktorija G. lolol
Load More Replies...
some of them where inspired but executed badly. If you want to serve your food in what looks like garden tools, get a ceramic company to create you ceramic looking garden tools. The novelty would still carry over. Food intake is all about the senses, and the first is visual. What they did there was just rude in many cases...and the live fish stuff...was horrendous, if they can serve seafood on a life fish, what is to say next time a baby pig won't have bacon strapped to its back holding a baguette in its mouth as it is walked by leash to your table. I am not vegetarian etc, but there is respect and that lacked it.
Some restaurants should send their workers back to school to learn "How to cook, how to serve and how to respect your clients". Most of what I've seen is just insulting for any average read person.
it's the restaurants telling them to do this, don't blame the workers for doing what they are told
Load More Replies...
Some of these look hard to clean or designed to make your food go cold either because it's so hard to eat.
What would they do if you sent the food back asking for a plate. And a whole one at that.
Dear bored panda and Facebook. F**k you. F**k you for constantly telling me people are commenting on my comment, but making it so I can't find my comment to read the responses.
i think its cool how inventive they are but do they all have to be recycled gross stuff like shoes n crates etc? who wants to eat out of someones hand or an old sack or dirty legos or trash cans? can't they serve food in unique containers or plates that aren't associated with yuck like an altoids canister for minty deserts or picture frames with cool images in them? come on! its food for goodness sake!
Okay I feel the need to defend the shovel one here as I live close by. The place that serves these English breakfasts on a shovel is actually a Railway Station for a completely authentic and well looked after heritage steam railway. So really, this actually makes sense, it is not some sort of weird Michelin Star restaurant gimmick...
lets be honest, if that pad with jello on it were realistic, then the jello would be everywhere.
This is all ridiculous. I couldn't even make it through the list it was so annoying.
Only one of them is half excusable, the wooden box cup for the cocktail is an actual cup for sake in Japan. It's called a masu. Only half excusable because it shouldn't be used for anything other than sake and it should be well made enough to NOT be leaking!
Meaning that restaurant really skimped on the quality of their drinkware.
Load More Replies...
Nr 25: Did I just see cheddar on something that was supposed to be sushi?
Most of them are beyond ridiculous and/or unhygienic - kinda liked #4, though ... ;-)
And pics like this make me hate hipsters and their hipster doings even more
Nope! Not going to further infuriate myself by going past the first page!
Am I the only one that appreciates the uniqueness and creativity of these food displays ?
This is sooooo 1990's, we are over it folks. Respect your customers and stop insulting their intelligence.
The thing missing here is context. While most are lame attempts to substitute for non-existent creativity, some are pretty cool, and others might be very appropriate in the right restaurant theme. Serving french fries in a Nike tennis shoe might be a great idea for a sports bar. Having a "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" Bloody Mary is actually quite a thing- some include whole fried chickens , mondo burgers, and whole pizzas. It's like the 72-oz steak in Amarillo or any number of eating challenges offering a five pound burger or a ten gallon margarita. It's a shill- a PR piece. You people have obviously never run (or probably worked in) a restaurant. The only thing that really caught my eye in a negative way were the bricks, fish bowls and other heavy objects. That would be brutal on the servers. As for everything else- if you don't like elaborate or quirky presentations, KEEP GOING THROUGH THE DRIVE THRU!! You're Dollar Menu people anyway.
A lot of people here find this stuff unsanitary and pretentious. That doesn't mean we're "Dollar Menu people." Check your condescending attitude.
Load More Replies... Ok, so little reminder for any restaurant owner that wants to be creative: Shoes are not plates, stones are not plates, sticks are not plates, toilets bowl(!!!!!) are not plates, customers hands are not plates either and if it's not sanitary, than you can't put food on it!
Everything in here makes me angry. These lame attempts at innovative cuisine are beyond ridiculous.
I feel sorry for people working there.... Customers are shocked once, but the workers deal with this cr*p every day. They assemble it, wash it, and take complaints to the things they're too shy to serve from the start. u_u
Indeed. Many pics made me wonder who carries around the heavy brick/stone/marble "bridges" and flee market stuff used to appear "authentic".
Load More Replies... I'd be sending 99,8% of them back and get me a real meal or a effing plate. Wtf?
And, yes, let's serve food on any old plastic. Especially hot and greasy food that'll absorb the softeners and other chemicals.
Motto of these restaurants: we want to be hip so we serve your food in the most ridiculous way and we absolutely don't give a sh*t how you eat it in a decent and non-spilling matter... here's your shocking check!
Most of the restaurant just got out of plates and glasses so they started to use anything else as serving boards.
For f**k's sake, cant people just serve food on a plate? I get they're trying to be creative and all, but if someone served me food like that I would send it back and ask for a proper plate. No way I'm eating out of a urinal. Or off of bricks. Or a shovel. Or having a drink out of a plastic bag or out of a watering can. I wasn't raised in a f*****g barn.
i enjoy anyone being creative outside the box but we are dealing with food here. no one i know wants to be served food out of a shoe or someones hand! can't they use recycled things that aren't related to gross smelly things like an altoids canister for minty deserts or a picture frame with cool images related to the food as a plate. come on people!
You just came up with 2 good ideas which are 1,000 times better the ones on this list.
Load More Replies... #19 is my absolute favourite for ironic content. The drinks are supposed to be zany and fun, yet every single soul in the picture looks utterly suicidal!!! Happyfunba...0e900b.jpg
"Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at."
Load More Replies... Some ideas were clever, and some others you want to scream, "How is any of this sanitary!?!?!" Lots of health code violations on here.
Well, some of them are really ridiculous. To be fair though, a few are actually from specially themed restaurants, so customers go there in order to experience something like that. And the drink in the wooden box is in fact an old traditional way to drink Japanese sake. Nothing fancy about that. And they don't leak. I have some of them at home, and the wood gives a nice aroma to the alcohol. Anyways. I agree though that food is for eating and savouring flavour-wise, not to play with.
"Below, Bored Panda has put together a list..." Aka, they went to WeWantPlates subreddit and stole pictures from the posts there. Such journalism, such integrity, such hard work, wow. Im sure it took a lot of effort to copy the images from there to here lmao
#151 is basically proof in the title already. Such a good job Viktorija G. lolol
Load More Replies... some of them where inspired but executed badly. If you want to serve your food in what looks like garden tools, get a ceramic company to create you ceramic looking garden tools. The novelty would still carry over. Food intake is all about the senses, and the first is visual. What they did there was just rude in many cases...and the live fish stuff...was horrendous, if they can serve seafood on a life fish, what is to say next time a baby pig won't have bacon strapped to its back holding a baguette in its mouth as it is walked by leash to your table. I am not vegetarian etc, but there is respect and that lacked it.
Some restaurants should send their workers back to school to learn "How to cook, how to serve and how to respect your clients". Most of what I've seen is just insulting for any average read person.
it's the restaurants telling them to do this, don't blame the workers for doing what they are told
Load More Replies... Some of these look hard to clean or designed to make your food go cold either because it's so hard to eat.
What would they do if you sent the food back asking for a plate. And a whole one at that.
Dear bored panda and Facebook. F**k you. F**k you for constantly telling me people are commenting on my comment, but making it so I can't find my comment to read the responses.
i think its cool how inventive they are but do they all have to be recycled gross stuff like shoes n crates etc? who wants to eat out of someones hand or an old sack or dirty legos or trash cans? can't they serve food in unique containers or plates that aren't associated with yuck like an altoids canister for minty deserts or picture frames with cool images in them? come on! its food for goodness sake!
Okay I feel the need to defend the shovel one here as I live close by. The place that serves these English breakfasts on a shovel is actually a Railway Station for a completely authentic and well looked after heritage steam railway. So really, this actually makes sense, it is not some sort of weird Michelin Star restaurant gimmick...
lets be honest, if that pad with jello on it were realistic, then the jello would be everywhere.
This is all ridiculous. I couldn't even make it through the list it was so annoying.
Only one of them is half excusable, the wooden box cup for the cocktail is an actual cup for sake in Japan. It's called a masu. Only half excusable because it shouldn't be used for anything other than sake and it should be well made enough to NOT be leaking!
Meaning that restaurant really skimped on the quality of their drinkware.
Load More Replies... Nr 25: Did I just see cheddar on something that was supposed to be sushi?
Most of them are beyond ridiculous and/or unhygienic - kinda liked #4, though ... ;-)
And pics like this make me hate hipsters and their hipster doings even more
Nope! Not going to further infuriate myself by going past the first page!
Am I the only one that appreciates the uniqueness and creativity of these food displays ?
This is sooooo 1990's, we are over it folks. Respect your customers and stop insulting their intelligence.
The thing missing here is context. While most are lame attempts to substitute for non-existent creativity, some are pretty cool, and others might be very appropriate in the right restaurant theme. Serving french fries in a Nike tennis shoe might be a great idea for a sports bar. Having a "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" Bloody Mary is actually quite a thing- some include whole fried chickens , mondo burgers, and whole pizzas. It's like the 72-oz steak in Amarillo or any number of eating challenges offering a five pound burger or a ten gallon margarita. It's a shill- a PR piece. You people have obviously never run (or probably worked in) a restaurant. The only thing that really caught my eye in a negative way were the bricks, fish bowls and other heavy objects. That would be brutal on the servers. As for everything else- if you don't like elaborate or quirky presentations, KEEP GOING THROUGH THE DRIVE THRU!! You're Dollar Menu people anyway.
A lot of people here find this stuff unsanitary and pretentious. That doesn't mean we're "Dollar Menu people." Check your condescending attitude.
Load More Replies... 