What characteristics do you look for in a hotel when you are travelling? Should the showers be spacious? The pillows plump? Perhaps you prefer a coffee machine in your room, or that the hotel is located near cafés, cocktails bars, and contemporary art galleries?
(Photo Credit: Gladstone Hotel)
Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel may check most of these boxes (it even has four art gallery spaces within the hotel and hosts around 70 exhibitions per year), but it also offers something very special – a Surreal Gourmet Room, the ultimate “art-meets-food sanctuary”, designed by professional gastronaut and Canadian, Bob Blumer.
All 37 of the rooms at the Gladstone Hotel are impressively artist-designed but room 403, the Surreal Gourmet Room, is every travel glutton’s dream and creatively mixes the elements of food and travel together.
By now we all know that the moon is not really made of cheese but the Swiss cheese canopy above the bed will certainly allow you to indulge this childhood myth. In addition to a selection of wine, a caviar-tin clock, and a Fruit Loops cupboard, this foodie favourite room features a small kitchenette where you can blend your own morning smoothies or grill late-night paninis. If you fancy a night in, the TV is tucked away behind a Pillsbury Doughboy panel and you can choose from one of Bob Blumer’s favourite food-related DVDs.
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And if plump pillows are indeed one of the characteristics you look for, what could be more so than laying your head on dream enhancing pillows designed to look like fluffy bags of marshmallows?
While the Surreal Gourmet Room will likely succeed in making you hungry, it may also be one of the most unparalleled hotel experiences you will ever have.
Tanya is an avid traveller who is happiest when using her camera to discover what delights the world has to offer. She originates from Canada, currently makes her home in the Netherlands, and is on an everlasting journey to visit all corners of the world. 
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