Don't Eat From The Toilet

Every day I walk by a giant plush pink poo mascot waving wildly and beckoning people to the latest rage restaurant called “Modern Toilet”. Apparently this restaurant has been featured on CNN, Food Network, etc. After a few weeks of his beguiling, the magical pink poo and his mystical poopie powers managed to hypnotize me into thinking I should try it too. So you know as soon as I had a friend in town I had to try it. I mean it is too stupid to pass up right?

You all can file this one under “duh”!!! But I can tell you that you should NEVER eat at a toilet themed restaurant. Now for those who are asking “whatever possessed you to do such a thing? “ I can only defend myself by saying that curiosity can occasionally get the best of me. What follows is essentially a modern fable of kitsch gone horribly wrong!

Poo is popular

For those of you who are unaware many Asian cultures have a pop culture obsession with poop – poop is cute, natural and nothing to be ashamed of. There are whole comic books devoted to poop, poop charms for your cell phone and finally a whole toilet themed restaurant thanks to two Taiwanese entrepreneurs.

The whole place is fitted out with commodes and sinks, shower heads and pipes line the walls. For added ambience, every ten minutes or so, the sickly Cantonese pop music is interrupted by a loud flushing noise. Sounds totally appetizing right?

Okay if you are not grossed out enough yet maybe having your beverage served in a mini urinal is only slightly less distasteful then having your meal arrive in a bathtub or a toilet. And to follow it up a large “soft serve” chocolate ice cream- plopped ever so artfully in a squat toilet.

This would have all been hilarious if the following weren’t also true:

1. The food and service were incredibly “crappy” - what did I expect?!

2. They don’t serve alcohol of any variety – which makes the whole thing a lot less amusing.

3. My friend Jeffrey on his way to the restroom accidently entered the kitchen where he was abruptly sent to the real restroom (outside the restaurant- the frickin’ place doesn’t even have an actual restroom- what the “?*&$@!*”). He was then told by the bitchy waitress that the signs on the door “aren’t just for decoration you know”.

4. When he opened the door to the real restroom he was greeted by a broken toilet and a bucket (the irony here is painful).

5. Within 20 minutes of leaving “Modern Toilet” BOTH of us were praying that we could get home to my old fashioned toilet – without being too graphic, eating at this place was like someone pulled the fire alarm in our bellies and it was “everybody get out now”. Wow nothing like overpriced diarrhea to end your trip with -sorry Jeffrey.

So the moral of this tale is that eating from the toilet is never in good taste no matter how cute the pink poo-poo may be!

Oh a side note – we ate at a very local cafe in the heart of Kowloon, I don't know what it was really called but we have lovingly nicknamed it the “Blade Runner Café” and didn’t- uh yeah let me emphasize - DID NOT get sick at all… go figure. And the cook there was practically naked while cooking noodles in a hubcap. F*** You Moden Toilet! I want my dignity and my money back!