In addition to the intermittent loud banging , which surprisingly freaked me out, Tom Jones’s “What’s New Pussycat?” blared over the speakers. At first, it was just absurd and funny. But as the hour continued, the song slowed and warped, taking on a sinister tone. I slowly felt as if I were losing my mind. Then at one point, I had to stick my hand in a vat of fryer oil after unlocking a box that held a recipe revealed that clue. (It was just dirty water with liquid smoke, I later learned, but my hand sure did reek of old grease and made me feel queasy.)

The second room was significantly more macabre: not only was there more frequent banging, but also drills suspended from the ceiling and sputtering on their own. A wrapped, bloodied body was hung upside down like an animal carcass and a heavy, bloodied wrench had been left on a worktable. Even some errant cinder blocks on the ground were overrun with fake rats. Lemieux didn’t say how many rooms there were in total, but since opening, she said, only two groups have successfully made it to the end.

I’ve successfully completed an escape room before, but this one is difficult. I kept muttering some increasingly profanity-laced variation of “This is actually hard!” I wondered if I would have done better had I been with people I knew or taken advantage of the max six-person allotment. But I’m also not very competitive, so while I enjoyed the medium-level spooks and the clever nods to the restaurant industry, I was completely fine with losing.

Esscape Room: The Real Kitchen Nightmare

Open-ended run at 24-11 41st Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; esscaperoom.com.