Potty mouth

In one of his routines from the 1960s, Bill Cosby asked why women go to the bathroom together. Have you ever been out on a double, triple, or fourple date, he asked, and one woman said, "Let's go to the ladies' room" and they all got up? Men would never do that, he said. If a guy stood up and said, "Let's go to the men's room," they'd say, "No, I think you'd better go by yourself." After he left, they'd say, "What's wrong with that guy, anyway?"

It turns out that if you're in Taiwan, you can go to a restaurant where this scenario never has to occur, no matter how many women are in your date group.

Because now, there are toilets right at your seat. In fact, your seat is a toilet.


And in case you don't like surprises, the restaurant's name is Modern Toilet.

I would have thought this type of themed restaurant would reach Japan first, or certainly Korea (whose toilet situation I discussed last week). But I guess Taiwan is trying hard to avoid reunification with the commies. By any means necessary.

So I'm sure you're wondering how this could have come to, uh, pass. Here's how:

The restaurant's Duty Manager, Wei Duo-Yi, explains how the idea developed:

- It was an ice shop decorated with toilets before. Most of the customers like the decorations so we tried to expand it into a restaurant -.

I remember back in the early 1980s, when I lived in Manhattan's West 70s, there was a restaurant on Broadway called Ernie's, and one of my sisters told me that if you ordered pasta, it was brought to you in a huge, white bowl. She called it "pasta in a potty."

It turns out that Modern Toilet takes this concept all but literally, serving food in toilet-shaped bowls. (Which we'll just have to assume are not real toilets.)

The seats are all made from toilet bowls, tables are glass-topped jumbo bathtubs, customers eat from mini plastic toilet bowls - and the WC themes run through the food and drinks menus.

Mmmmmmmm, appetizing!

Last, no one should finish this story without first checking out this video, at the same link, from ITN, which apparently does not stand for International Toilet News. (Mild content warning: Infantile toilet puns, and a poo-shaped chocolate dessert.)