Ever heard the expression don’t shit where you eat?
Well, I’m about to throw that out the window… in a very literal way.
Last month Moscow opened a toilet-themed restaurant that brings the art of eating and defecating together in harmony. It’s aptly called Crazy Toilet Cafe, and diners can sit on any one of 50 real toilets and enjoy dishes that kiiiiinda look like poop (think swirled sausage, and brown creamy mushroom soup) while sipping on drinks served out of mini-urinals. The restaurant’s walls are decorated with fecal-themed cartoons and the poop emoji abounds!
It’s a Toilet Day reveler’s dream!
And apparently, the Crazy Toilet Cafe is not the only poop-celebrating establishment of its kind. There is an entire Modern Toilet Restaurant chain throughout Asia that’s actually quite popular! Locals and tourists alike enjoy dishes served in mini-toilet bowls, use napkins that come courtesy of a toilet paper roll, sit at a table that is a glass-covered bathtub, and snack on chocolate fro-yo that looks like…..well, you get the gist.
In England, the potty love gets even trendier. Recently, London has seen several bars and cafes open in the city’s abandoned public toilets. 1890s urinals have been fashioned into booths, stall doors converted into tables, and original signage about proper hygiene (hand-washing, venereal diseases) are on proud display. Though there’s no poop-reminiscent food at these hot spots (artisanal cocktails served in mason jars will do just fine, thank you very much), some do keep the original toilets on display.
While these individual establishments run the gamut from gimmicky to innovative, what they have in common is that they represent a luxury many of us take for granted: readily available access to toilets. These London bars could never exist if public toilets in the city hadn’t gone all-but obsolete. In Taiwan and Moscow it’s a little easier to poke fun at poop when open defecation isn’t a serious national concern. But the truth is, in many parts of the world these restaurants wouldn’t be unique and fun at all; they would be in bad taste.
1 in 3 people in the world lack access to improved sanitation, and 1 billion people still defecate in the open. These are pretty hard statistics for me to wrap my mind around, but there it is, and it’s a reality that greatly impacts not just individual health but issues like gender equality and education.
So while I’d love to eat a cheese plate in a former 19th century bathroom stall as much as the next girl, I also want to do something about making safe toilet access a universal standard.
And you can do your part by going to TAKE ACTION NOW to improve sanitation conditions for millions of people worldwide.