Times Square is a different beast now. It’s cleaner, sure, but it's also arguably more sterile, filled with the same flagship stores you can find in a suburban mall in Ohio. But if you grew up in the late 90s or early 2000s, there was one specific corner of 51st Street and Broadway that felt like a portal to another dimension. I’m talking about Mars 2112. It wasn't just a restaurant. It was a 33,000-square-foot fever dream that combined mediocre chicken fingers with the absolute pinnacle of themed entertainment technology of the era.
You remember the red rock? The giant, windowless facade that looked like a tectonic plate had just burst through the sidewalk? That was the bait.
The NYC Restaurant Mars 2112 Experience Was Pure Chaos
Walking into the NYC restaurant Mars 2112 wasn't a "table for four, please" kind of situation. No. You had to earn your dinner. The entrance immediately funneled you into a "spacecraft" simulator. You’d strap in, the doors would hiss shut, and the floor would shake violently as a screen showed you "blasting off" from Manhattan and hurtling toward the Red Planet.
Honestly, the motion was aggressive. If you had motion sickness, you were basically doomed before the appetizers arrived. But for a kid in 1998? It was the coolest thing on Earth. Or off it.
Once the doors opened on the other side, you stepped out into a cavernous, multi-level subterranean world bathed in eerie red and purple neon. It felt like a mix between a Star Wars set and a Las Vegas casino. There were costumed aliens wandering around—real actors in heavy prosthetics who would hiss at you or try to steal your fries. The "Mars Bar" was a centerpiece of glowing liquids, and the "Crystal Crater" was where the magic happened.
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The sheer scale of the place was staggering. We’re talking about a $40 million investment in 1998 dollars. That is an insane amount of money to spend on a place that primarily served "Mars-tinis" and "Cosmic Chicken."
Why We Loved the Absurdity
The food was... fine. It was standard tourist fare. You had the "Mars-teroids" (sliders) and various pastas that were dyed strange colors or given galactic names. But nobody went to the NYC restaurant Mars 2112 for the culinary excellence. You went because it was the era of the "Mega-Theme." This was the same NYC that had the WWF (now WWE) New York, the Jekyll & Hyde Club, and the ESPN Zone.
Mars 2112 was the king of them all because it stayed in character. Even the bathrooms had "Earthling" and "Alien" signs. The waitstaff were "citizens" of Mars. It was immersive before "immersive" became a marketing buzzword that every pop-up museum uses to justify a $50 ticket for a selfie in a ball pit.
The Financial Gravity That Brought It Down
Building a Martian colony in the middle of Midtown isn't cheap. The overhead was astronomical. Rent in Times Square is a killer, but when you add in the cost of maintaining high-tech simulators, paying a small army of actors, and cooling a 33,000-square-foot basement, the math starts to look grim.
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The restaurant actually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection more than once. The first time was in the early 2000s, but it managed to limp along, fueled by birthday parties and tourists who didn't know any better. However, by 2012, the novelty had worn off. The simulators were getting glitchy. The "futuristic" decor started to look like a dusty basement from a low-budget sci-fi movie.
When it finally closed its doors in January 2012, it felt like the end of an era. The space was eventually carved up. Part of it became a gym. Can you imagine doing squats in the same spot where a three-breasted alien once served you a lukewarm burger? It’s poetic, in a weird way.
What People Still Get Wrong About Mars 2112
A lot of people think it was just a tourist trap. That’s a bit reductive. While it definitely preyed on the pockets of families from the suburbs, it was also a massive employer for the NYC acting community. Those aliens? Most of them were Off-Broadway performers or NYU students who took the "lore" of the restaurant incredibly seriously. They had backstories. They had dialects.
Another misconception is that it failed solely because the food was bad. Plenty of restaurants with terrible food thrive in Times Square (looking at you, various chain spots). Mars 2112 failed because it was a "one-and-done" destination. Once you’d seen the simulator and taken a photo with a Martian, there wasn't a huge incentive to go back. It lacked the repeat-customer infrastructure that a place like the Hard Rock Cafe manages to maintain through merchandise and music history.
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The Lasting Legacy of the Red Planet
You can still find remnants of the NYC restaurant Mars 2112 if you look hard enough. Mostly, it lives on in the form of eBay listings. Old menus, "Mars-port" boarding passes, and light-up souvenir glasses frequently pop up for collectors of "dead malls" and "liminal spaces."
There’s a deep nostalgia for this kind of "unhinged" dining. Today’s themed restaurants are often just "Instagrammable walls." They lack the soul—and the literal moving parts—of the 90s theme titans. Mars 2112 didn't care about your aesthetic; it wanted to shake your bones in a simulator and make you feel like you were 140 million miles away from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
If you’re looking to recapture that vibe today, you’re mostly out of luck in NYC. The Jekyll & Hyde Club finally shuttered its last location a few years ago. The city has shifted toward "speakeasies" and "curated tasting menus." We traded the giant animatronic spiders and Martian simulators for Edison bulbs and exposed brick. Maybe that's a sign of progress, but honestly, it's a little boring.
Actionable Ways to Relive the Era
If you miss the feeling of the NYC restaurant Mars 2112, here is how you can actually engage with that history or find its modern spiritual successors:
- Scour the Archives: Check out the YouTube videos of the original "blast-off" sequence. There are several high-quality POV videos that capture the exact low-res CGI and hydraulic hissing of the entrance. It’s a 10/10 nostalgia trip.
- Visit the Spiritual Successors: If you want "weird" in NYC, head to Ellen's Stardust Diner. It’s not sci-fi, but it has that same high-energy, performance-heavy atmosphere that defined the 51st Street corridor.
- Collectible Hunting: Search for "Mars 2112 Credit Card" on auction sites. The restaurant used to give out these plastic cards for the arcade, and they are now niche collector items for NYC history buffs.
- Themed Dining Today: For a modern take on immersive dining that actually has good food, look into Puaada or specific "concept" bars in Brooklyn that lean into high-concept decor without the 90s cheese.
The story of Mars 2112 is a reminder that sometimes, being "too much" is exactly what makes a place unforgettable. It was loud, it was expensive, and it was undeniably weird. It was exactly what New York City used to be.
Next Steps for the Nostalgic Traveler:
Check the current tenant list at 1633 Broadway. While the Martian landscape is gone, the subterranean architecture still influences how that massive basement space is used today. If you're in the area, stand near the 50th St subway entrance and look up—the ghosts of the Red Planet are still there, hidden under decades of Midtown gloss.