PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Who says you can’t still play with your food? A new Center City bar and restaurant is conjuring up a brew of science, technology and mixology for a magical dining experience.
Owner and co-founder Matthew Courtland said The Cauldron, located at 1305 Locust St., is fantasy-inspired.
“It’s a bit of an escape room meets a cocktail-making class meets a bar and restaurant,” said Courtland, a former teacher from Marlton, New Jersey, who now lives in London.
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Diners can sign up for a potion-making class, where students are presented with a magic wand of their choice, robe and witch’s hat. The seminar is led by a “potion master.”
“There, you make three drinks,” he said. “You pour the first one with your magic wand from a unicorn.” Participants then brew two more molecular cocktails, each with different effects.
The food also comes with enchanted molecular-inspired properties. Take the fish and chips: “They are battered with Yards beer, as we want to localize a little bit,” said Courtland. “They are served over a bed of hot river rocks, dry ice underneath coated with sea salt water, so as you are eating your fish and chips, you are also experiencing the vapor and the smell of the sea.”
Or, the cauliflower cheese dish: “The cauliflower is brought out on a hot cast-iron skillet on fire, and then you put out the fire with ribbons of hot English cheddar.”
At the center of everything at The Cauldron is an engineering and design studio called The Magic of Things, which Courtland said they created because the technology didn’t yet exist to do what they wanted it to do.
“Hardware and software engineers, prop and set designers, experts in food and beverage and retail — that’s where all of our technology is manufactured and produced,” he explained. “We are on patent No. 5 now for magic wand technology and drink dispensing.”