uWink Bistro: A Hypermedia Restaurant

One highlight of our recent trip to Los Angeles was meeting legendary entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell, the founder and former CEO of video game giant Atari and the amusement-themed kid’s restaurant Chuck E. Cheese. His most recent venture is uWink Bistro, a restaurant concept that combines traditional dining with at-the-table touchscreen wait service and entertainment.

At uWink, there are no servers, just food runners who deliver the orders customers place through their tabletop touch screen terminals. The touch screen monitors also offer a large selection of games and entertainment - from comic strips to movie trivia and trailers. Some of our favorite diversions: the huge, black-and-white photographs projected on all walls of the dining area (the images change depending on the theme of the night or special engagements), virtual foosball (a virtual foosball table projected onto a flat white surface with joystick balls controlling the movements of the players) and the table-to-table trivia and game challenges. Bushnell says global table-to-table gaming is in the works, allowing patrons in Los Angeles to challenge diners in other states or countries in real-time. uWink is open for business in Woodland Hills, CA, with more locations throughout LA County to be unveiled soon.