I really really wanted to like the Ton Ton Club. The concept of a video game bar made me jump up and down with glee. But now that I've visited I'm a bit disappointed.
First of all, they have video games, but none of the super popular games like Ms. Pac-Man or Dig Dug or anything. They have all these less popular games instead. The most recognizable ones were The Simpsons, Daytona Racing and Mortal Kombat II. They also have one of those game cabinets with a simulator inside that can play like 500 different games, but they're all just a little bit off from the games you've heard of before.
There are some pinball machines (including Elvira!), an air hockey table, and some homemade games - a homemade remote control race car and track you steer from a video console while looking away from the car and the track, and a conceptual art pinball machine that appears to have a ball that can draw lines on the pinball machine 'floor' as it bounces around. But it's broken. And the racing car thing doesn't work too well either, with the car losing signal and stopping completely in places until a human comes to move it a bit farther down the track.
Which leads me to the next thing about this place - there is quite a bit of stuff that doesn't work. The 500 game cabinet wasn't working at the time I visited, neither was the conceptual art pinball machine, and we couldn't get the Daytona Racing game to let us play in 2-player mode. The lock on the women's bathroom door was broken, too. Overall it's pretty sad when you go to a video game place and all the games are broken. They should have a maintenance guy on staff!
The good things about this place though were the food, and the fact that you could look out onto the street and watch prostitutes negotiate with johns in the red light windows across the street. Some people find it sad, but I found it to be an interesting bit of people watching, especially since you usually can never stand still around red light windows, you always have to keep moving.
They have an interesting menu, including 7 different variations on the "hot dog". I say "hot dog" because technically it was a sausage in a piece of bread, but the combinations of toppings were so weird I hesitate to compare them to a Chicago style hot dog, the gold standard of hot dogs. I had the chili dog, which was weird (chili without sauce, so basically just beef, cheese, beans, jalapenos, sliced red and yellow peppers (?), creme fraiche (??), corn (???? of course corn, it's europe!)) served in a crispy piece of french bread, and the hot dog was made of chicken (?!) but overall it was tasty. Weird, but tasty.
I'd recommend this place as somewhere to hang out with friends and get drunk while playing random video games or board games. It's a great place to go if you don't expect too much. read more