What makes the restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island hotel unforgettable is that it’s located 16 feet below the ocean surface, allowing guests to enjoy their lobster while watching colorful tropical fish bolt around the surrounding coral reef. Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, which opened in 2005, has room for about a dozen guests, so if you want to try this unique experience, you should book well in advance.

Sipping a coffee and petting a cat at the same time is one of life's little pleasures. That was the thinking behind Cat Flower, the world's first cat cafe, when it opened in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998. With its relaxing vibes and furry feline residents, the cafe appealed to locals who could not have pets of their own in their rented, high-rise apartments.

The ability to order food at a restaurant from your car wasn’t always a given. The first McDonald’s drive-thru opened in January 1975 when a franchise owner in Sierra Vista, Arizona, simply pushed out a portion of the wall big enough for an attendant to stand in it and added a sliding window big enough to pass food through. The rest is fast-food history.

Securing a dinner reservation for a large group should be no problem at this Syrian restaurant. Bawabet Dimashq (which translates to "Damascus Gate”) has seating capacity for an incredible 6,014 people and a floor area of 215,277 square feet. The family-owned restaurant is open seven days a week, and there are separate themed areas where Chinese and Indian cuisine is served.

If you’re looking for a scoop from the country’s oldest parlor still in existence, head to Bassetts in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market. They’ve been at the same location since 1893, passing down through five generations of the same family owners. You can order one of the classics — peach, pistachio, pumpkin — or try one of the more unique flavors like Guatemalan Ripple and Raspberry Truffle.

The concept of revolving restaurants took “dinner with a view” to a whole new level. In 1959, the first revolving restaurant opened atop the Florianturm, a telecommunications tower in Dortmund, Germany. The tip of the tower reaches 720 feet (making it Germany’s tallest freestanding structure at the time of its opening), and the restaurant (located at 451 feet) offers diners a bird’s-eye view of the skyline.

America’s oldest restaurant (and bar) actually predates the country itself by over 100 years. In 1673, the White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island, opened its doors to customers. Except for some short breaks for Prohibition and renovations, the tavern has been serving food and drink almost continuously ever since. The building itself has stood even longer, since 1652, and is even rumored to be haunted.

Though some restaurants around the world opened earlier, Madrid’s Sobrino de Botín holds the Guinness World Record for operating continuously, without interruption, in the same building with its original interior. Its origins can be traced to Jean Botín and his wife, who moved to Spain from France in the 18th century and opened a small inn in 1725 where they cooked food brought by their guests.

A Parisian named Monsieur Boulanger is widely credited with opening the world’s first modern restaurant in 1765, near the Louvre museum. We call them restaurants today because the first establishment (and others in Paris that opened soon after) primarily served “bouillons restaurants” (restorative broths) — a type of slow-simmered bone broth with purported health benefits.

Naples is the birthplace of one of Italy’s most famous culinary exports: pizza. So it’s no surprise that here you will find the world’s oldest pizza parlor, Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, which opened in 1738. The restaurant began as an open-air stand with street vendors who balanced tins of warm pizza atop their heads. It expanded into a full-blown restaurant in 1830.