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An entrepreneur has launched a new underwater dining experience that allows customers to eat like fishes.

Foie gras, lobster salad and champagne at 'The Pearl' restaurant in Belgium is served by waiter scuba divers - who then leave diners to feast alone in an air pocket five metres below the surface

Customers Nicolas Mouchart and his wife Florence demonstrated how you have to yank on your scuba gear and flippers when you go out for dinner at the Brussels' swimming pool .

Lowering themselves to the floor of the pool - an especially deep one built to train scuba divers - they then swam to one end where their restaurant awaits, 16 feet below the surface.

The Pearl is actually a two-metre wide white sphere tethered close to the pool's floor.

(Image: REUTERS) (Image: REUTERS)

Once there, the diners jettison their weighted belts before swimming underneath and up into the pod that looks like a cross between a lunar landing craft and a giant spaceman's helmet.

Food is served by expert scuba divers who deliver foie gras, lobster salad and champagne in waterproof cases.

(Image: REUTERS) (Image: REUTERS)

They then leave diners to peer out of the portholes, enjoying the strange tranquillity of eating in an air pocket, completely submerged.

"We are launching a new era of restaurants," said John Beernaerts, who founded the NEMO33 pool in the Belgian capital a decade ago.

(Image: REUTERS) (Image: REUTERS)

The restaurant, where an underwater meal costs 99 euros (£85) per person, took more than a year to build.

Multiple attempts were needed to perfect the design, mechanics and food delivery system.

(Image: REUTERS)

"It was a wonderful experience," said Mouchart, 41, his hair still wet after the return swim through the warm - 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) - water to the pool side.

"It was the first time in our life that we ate underwater, which was really fun.

"It's a unique dinner and we will remember this all our life."