Greatest fictional movie restaurant?

There's a dozen or so news stories that I should be writing my opinion on right now but a link over at /film caught my eye and it's just taken away twenty minutes of my life. Devindra Hardawar has found a comprehensive list of fictional restaurants from movies and t.v. shows over at the statistical site StateMaster, and having studied the evidence, I've come to the conclusion that Jack Rabbit Slim's timewarp diner from Pulp Fiction is my all time favourite. The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, it was the iconography of this particular scene that stayed with me above everything else, not just because of the cool production design and how loose, free associating and totally about CHARACTER the scene was (you could take this scene out and the plot of Pulp Fiction wouldn't make any less sense) but also because of how much of a special tribute it was to the great John Travolta. I'm kinda re-treading on old ground here so I won't impose for long but for the benefit of those that missed it previously, in a piece titled"Be Cool" from 08.06.09 I said;

Everytime I watch Pulp Fiction, I€™m immensely fond of a two minute tracking shot expertly directed by a still rookie Quentin Tarantino, as we follow Vincent Vega (John Travolta) around the 50€™s nostalgic diner of Jack Rabbit Slims with some amusement as he suggests some genuine recognition to the sights around him. Elvis signing on stage, Doris Day talking to customers, Marilyn Monroe serving drinks, a red car that looks suspiciously like Grease Lightning.

What Tarantino did so well with this scene is remind us of where Travolta came from and how Hollywood had so forgotten what a great star of pop culture he really was. Travolta, the leading man of the 50€™s set musical Grease, the biggest movie on the planet at the time of it€™s release, had since been wrongly type-cast by those in power who thought he was a one trick pony. Here, Tarantino is almost saying to the audience, €œOh yeah, I remember you€ I remember this€, at the same time as Travolta on screen is having the same kind of flashback to a moment in time when he was a pop culture hero.

Travolta's Vincent Vega calls Jack Rabbit Slim's a "Wax Museum with a pulse", but he could have easily been talking about his own career in the early 90's after degrading himself of his dignity by starring in the Look Who's Talking franchise when the movie roles just weren't coming his way. As the sign of the restaurant says; "The next best thing to a Time Machine", could also be in reference to the movie itself for Travolta. The restaurant acts as a time machine back to a place where he could be cool again, where he could bust his dancing moves from Saturday Night Fever and Grease, where he could play a character who is completely comfortable in his own skin..

The cherry topping of the scene is the cameo from Steve Buscemi as the waiter Buddy Holly, after previously playing a character in Reservoir Dogs who can't wait to proclaim his hatred for the whole tipping system restaurant staff. Speaking of Tarantino, I also wonder if we will ever see the inside (or indeed out) of what Big Kahuna Burger looks like, or maybe it's better let in our imagination? Ok that went on way longer than I wanted it to, so I'll just briefly mention other fictional restaurants from the list that got my eye. A close runner-up, and probably my favourite till about the age of 16 or 17 would be Mos Eisley's Diner from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, a place "where you will never find a more retched hive of scum and villany"... The strange Western-style tavern where deadly gunslingers are replaced with fugitive monsters and all kinds of weird looking creatures. The place where we first meet Han Solo. And the place with that catchy signature tune...

The fictional restaurant which is the least successful advertisement for what it must be like to be a waiter/waitress would be Chotchkies from Office Space...

The best "trying to get a reversation for a restaurant" scene would go American Psycho and "Dorsia"...

Any other notable fictional restaurants I've missed that are worthy of a shout? I guess Monk's Diner from Seinfeld is an obvious one and I was going to mention Mooby's, the setting of Clerks II but then do we really live in a world where a fast food joint is called a restaurant?