Inside the UK’s first nude restaurant… and there’s no sausages or melons on the menu

There is not a meat and two veg dish in sight and a distinct lack of sausages and melons on the menu – but then when you dine NAKED maybe that’s not a bad thing.

In a dining first, I am having lunch at The Bunyadi, London’s first nude restaurant.

Bunyadi – which means “natural” in Hindi – is the latest creation from Lollipop, the company behind a Breaking Bad cocktail bar in the heart of London’s hipster scene in Shoreditch.

A pop up event – open for just three months near Elephant & Castle in Southwark, South London – The Bunyadi is a prehistoric affair.

Staff and customers are all starkers, phones are banned, there’s no electricity and even the food is cooked without the use of gas.

Seb Lyall, the owner and creator, says the aim of the experience is to enjoy, “a night out without any impurities: no chemicals, no artificial colours, no electricity, no gas, no phone and even no clothes.”

Incredibly, demand is already outstripping supply at the eatery, with over 46,300 people already signed up to Bunyadi’s waiting list, eager to fork out £68.99 each for the five-course, 1 hour 45 minute experience.

So I count myself lucky when I arrive for a late lunch sitting.

Moments through the door I am kindly offered some Dutch courage in the form of one of the five signature cocktails on offer at the fully-stocked (and fully-clothed) bar at the entrance. They ease you in gently at The Bunyadi.

Then, like a guest in a fancy spa, I am led into a changing room and asked to disrobe and slip into a white towelling dressing gown. I’m then led to a candle-lit table surrounded with roughly-hewn wooden logs and told to strip off.

For hygiene reasons – and to avoid getting splinters in your bum – guests are asked to take off their dressing gowns and use them as a cushion between their cheeks and the logs that pass for chairs.

Much to my relief, each wooden table is cordoned off by bamboo and wicker partitions to avoid cross-table ogling.

Apparently, stripping off is some sort of metaphor for getting back to basics by liberating us from unnatural additives in our food. But sat there, all exposed on a tiny wooden stool like a naked gnome, I am not quite sure where the leap from natural food to nude dining came from.

The food comes along thick and fast, presumably to make sure couples on Tinder dates have no time to give in to primal urges in the dark.

Incredibly, the waiting staff are also naked apart from fig leaves covering their privates – no wonder there’s a waiting list, this place is like Hooters without the modesty.

The restaurant claims to be aiming for an early man/Garden of Eden vibe but with all the flesh on show I feel more like I am trapped in a saucy scene from Game of Thrones.

Unfortunately, the menu misses a trick by failing to include a single course containing sausage or melon, making it all but impossible for nervous guests to break the ice with a bad pun – there is not a meat and two veg dish in sight.

In the kitchen I figure there must be a real Naked Chef, imagining Jamie Oliver in the buff, judging our flabby bodies and blaming too many fizzy drinks, until I am assured that for safety reasons the cooks are all fully clothed.

I tuck into delicious cured salmon with seaweed salad and sun-dried tomato-stuffed courgette flowers and manage to forget that I am naked for a moment as I wash it all down with some organic wine.

There are no ‘sizzling’ foods, to avoid unfortunate accidents and all the ingredients are fresh, natural and not full of preservatives. You can even eat the cutlery which is made from wheat and eggs.

Seb tells me: “The whole concept of naked food isn’t a new one. We just go a step further by using edible cutlery, man-made utensils and by giving the customers the opportunity to be naked too.”

The 33 year-old Londoner also says he was inspired by the body positivity movement on social media but I don’t think there’s much that would make me feel more body negative than my unsightly scars and rolls putting friends off their grub.

Bunyadi is billed as providing the experience of “ultimate freedom” and towards the end of the five-course feast I discover why.

Without my trousers on there is no need to loosen my belt.