After failing to make a reservation at Dorsia, Patrick Bateman takes Courtney, with whom he is having an affair, to a restaurant named Barcadia in ‘American Psycho.’ Barcadia serves as a timely replacement for Bateman after reservations at Dorsia continue to elude him throughout the film. Since the backdrop of restaurants plays a significant role in the film’s thematic exploration of a vacuous lifestyle characterized by rampant materialism and commercialism, Barcadia is an important high-end locale where Bateman dines while setting up a meeting with somebody else. The restaurant is considered a substitute for Dorsia, thereby attaching great value to it and raising questions regarding its authenticity!
Barcadia is Not a Real Restaurant
Barcadia in ‘American Psycho’ is a fictional restaurant conceived by Bret Easton Ellis for his novel of the same name. In the narrative, although it is considered one of the upper-echelon restaurants in Manhattan, New York, it is placed in a league below Dorsia, where Patrick repeatedly has his reservation requests rebuffed. The serial killer protagonist has to swallow his pride and ego and make do with Barcadia’s food and ambiance after he sets up a dinner date with Courtney, the fiancée of one of Bateman’s colleagues. When she arrives with Bateman for their date, the woman is out of sorts, feeling immediately aggrieved that he had tricked her into accompanying him by not taking her to Dorsia as promised.
While the restaurant where Bateman and Courtney dine is not real, there are several establishments around the globe called Barcadia. From local cuisine to a mixture of a bar and arcade, the restaurant can be found in all shapes and forms. For instance, there is one named precisely the same in the city of Dallas in North Texas, called Barcadia Dallas. The establishment is a 21-and-up-only place where drinks, food, and an arcade with a diverse arrangement of games like Jenga and vintage card games are up for offer. Although the Barcadia from ‘American Psycho’ and the one in Dallas share the name, they differ in their range of customers. The film counterpart is a fine-dining establishment set in the urbanscape of Manhattan, where restaurants are of a cutting-edge variety.
Since the filming of the movie took place in Toronto, Ontario, a restaurant named Monsoon at 100 Simcoe Street doubled as Barcadia. The Asian-themed cuisine was replaced in real life by Michael’s on Simcoe, a steakhouse that blends modern cuisine with Italian roots. The establishment has permanently closed down, but there are plans to reopen it elsewhere. In the film, Barcadia’s array of esoteric food choices and wood paneling go unnoticed by Bateman and his companion due to their fixation on dining in Manhattan’s best and most trendy locales. The whole thing is simply a game of status and affirming one’s reputation as a significant player in the Wall Street scene. Therefore, they attach no real value to the food being served, confirming its relegation to a fictional place of no importance.
Read more: American Psycho: Is American Gardens an Actual Apartment Complex in New York?
