The door was sealed shut with several padlocks there were about as many minutes left in the game. Electric drills hanging from the ceiling came to life with random fits of whirring, what looked like a body bag dripping with blood dangled in a corner. We passed through a walk-in freezer with sterile white walls to another room, this one decidedly more gory than the last. With less than 10 minutes remaining, the final padlock came off - but the nightmare wasn’t over yet. Clues from the tattooed bartender in the previous room (later revealed to be Radzyminski) arrived with greater frequency via an intercom, as we scrambled to unlock the next door before the clock ran out. Photos courtesy of Esscape RoomĪs the minutes wore down, the continuously looping background track of Tom Jones’s “ What’s New Pussycat” (used often to wreak havoc) dropped in both speed and octaves until it was nearly unrecognizable, sounding more like a sinister carnival tune than a jaunty 1960s pop song. From somewhere beyond the room, the sporadic buzz of what sounded like chainsaws revving was frankly terrifying, and intermittent bursts of pounding on the locked door were sudden and frantic enough that my lifespan was certainly shortened by several years. All the while, increasingly heavy fog filled the hot room with a suffocating haze. Instead, the chefs gamely flipped through stained recipe pages, shone flashlights into dark crannies, and stuck their hands into unknown receptacles - decoding ciphers in search of the chef’s knives that would hopefully lead to salvation (or at least an exit sign). “I was looking forward to hopping on the pass.” “I thought we were going to have to expedite tickets,” Brown later said jokingly.
The set and props are sourced largely from Lemieux’s and Radzymnski’s storage unit the couple, who own the Baroness and the Huntress bars in Long Island City, have accumulated heaps of broken kitchen equipment in their decade-plus of restaurant experience.īut despite the relative familiarity of a back-of-house setting, this horror puzzle of a kitchen nightmare was not made easier in the slightest by the presence of three working chefs. The chef, notorious for his temper and a checkered past, was under investigation after several of his staff members had simply “vanished” - or so the story goes.Īt first glance, Le Countess’s den of terror looks like a real restaurant kitchen, from the fryer bubbling with ominously greasy liquid, to the order tickets lining the rail above the cluttered, grimy grill. In Esscape Room’s narrative, concocted by Lemieux and Radzymnski, you are a group of sous chefs reporting for an open call at Le Countess, a previously closed “speakeasy bistro” owned by chef Francois “Le Boucher” (that’s “The Butcher,” for those of you who don’t speak French or use Google Translate) Hellerstein. “But sure.”Įscape rooms typically have a backstory, some mythology to prop up the oddly popular recreational activity that is paying to trap yourself in a room of puzzles and horrors for an hour. “I will probably freak the fuck out,” Sze promised in response to the invitation. So how did they feel about tackling a fictional one? The culinary-themed venue, dubbed “ Esscape Room: The Real Kitchen Nightmare” and unveiled on Friday, September 13, by owners and operators Melanie Lemieux and Kyle Radzyminski of Ess Hospitality Group, seemed an appropriate challenge for the three actual chef-restaurateurs I had invited along: Trigg Brown of Win Son, Richard Ho of Ho Foods, and Eric Sze of Eight Eight Six, all of whom have seen their own fair share of real-life kitchen nightmares. The door was locked behind us, leaving no choice but to continue onward, eventually finding ourselves trapped in what looked like the apocalyptic remains of a restaurant kitchen - complete with sticky surfaces and carefully arranged disarray that would make a rookie dishwasher faint. We were stripped of our phones and personal belongings.
#BUTCHERS BASEMENT ESCAPE ROOM PORTLAND MAINE PROFESSIONAL#
On a dark and rainy night two days before Halloween, I entered a small, square waiting room in the basement of a nondescript commercial building in Long Island City, Queens, alongside three professional chefs.
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