Fecal attraction
Dining at Taiwan’s toilet eatery
TAIPEI — Sick and tired of six straight days of nothing but Chinese food while on a press trip to Taiwan, a few members of the media decided on the final night in Taiwan to make a detour to one of the most famous themed restaurants in Taiwan: Modern Toilet.
Much has been said and written about the chain of restaurants in Taiwan but most agree on one thing: its toilet and excrement theme is a tourist draw because of its novelty.
We went to the branch in Ximending in Taipei (there are others in Shilin, Taipei and another in Taichung). Located at an intersection on Xining Road, Modern Toilet is unmissable thanks to its neon sign and floating toilet bowl. It was a beacon and we followed it.
At first, we were in doubt as to how far they took the dirty joke but upon our entrance we realized that they ran an entire mile with the theme — everything from the seats, tables, and décor were either toilet bowls or urinals, and so is the menu.
Note that we went pretty late in the evening — around 8:30 p.m. and the restaurant closes at 10 p.m. — but the place is still full, with the entire second floor (the restaurant occupies the second to the fourth floor of the building) filled with groups eating happily food served in urinals and toilet bowls.
We browsed through the similarly shaped menu and picked appetizers which cost from NTD90 to NTD260 (roughly P150 to P433) — the main dishes like hotpots can go as much as NTD380 (or P634). It wasn’t that cheap but we thought the ambiance was worth it. Sadly, the food was not. We ordered the simplest appetizers: Toilet Chicken Nuggets which were, honestly, frozen ones much like what you can get from convenience stores; the Modern Toilet Crappy Meat Sauce Fries with a side of mashed potatoes shaped like poop (sans gravy); Golden Fries with Cheese Dip, again with a side of poop-shaped mashed potatoes but this time with gravy; Modern Toilet Bread with olive oil dip; and three shaved ice desserts.
While the portions were generous and the shaved ice desserts were humongous, the taste was nothing to write home about.
After we took the requisite food shots, we fell on the food like starved men because we missed Western food a lot, but after a while we realized it really wasn’t worth the price.
The cheese dip served with fries is basically Cheez Whiz, and the chicken nuggets were ones you get from a carton. The fries were suitably crunchy so that was good, and the mashed potatoes were smooth, but the gravy was more pepper than gravy which was a hit with one of us, which is something. The bread, which had the consistency of the really dense pinaputok bread available in the Philippines, was just OK.
The best part of the entire meal, for this writer at least, were the shaved ices named Modern Toilet 1 and 2. We ordered two Modern Toilet 1’s as one preferred vanilla ice cream and the other chocolate, and a number 2 which is a strawberry shaved ice topped with real strawberries and strawberry ice cream.
The waiters cautioned that the desserts were meant for sharing but obviously he did not know our capacity — this writer consumed number 2 all by myself, hitting the bottom of the squat urinal it was served in.
Number 2 was an amalgamation of everything the owners thought would go into this halo- halo- like dessert: strawberry ice cream, red beans, nata de coco, corn flake, a crispy waffle, strawberries, and strawberry syrup while the number 1 was topped with chocolate biscuits, chocolate candy, chocolate/ vanilla ice cream and wafer.
The number 1 looked entirely like what would naturally go into a toilet bowl while number 2 looked like something that should rush a person to a hospital. But yucky comparisons aside, it was a fun dessert.
After the meal, it was the group’s consensus that it was a restaurant one goes to once and probably never again as most of what we ordered was underwhelming — but we did concede that we did not try the main dishes so I might just go back again to get a better grasp of the Modern Toilet.
The Modern Toilet is located at 2F, No 7, Ln 50, Xining S. Rd., Taipei City.
For more information, visit www. moderntoilet.com.tw.