After planning our visit to Longshan Temple for that morning, I figured Modern Toilet would be ideal for lunch, as it was only one stop away on the MRT line. The MRT is a lot like New York City's subway system, with different lines taking you to different parts of the city. Our trip to Modern Toilet would be our first on Taipei's MRT.
Nino's post on Modern Toilet contained a helpful map on how to get to the restaurant from the Ximen station. Unfortunately, I didn't print it to take on the trip with me. I remembered to go north west for a couple of blocks and then go left to head west at the Starbucks. So far so good. I figured that if I kept walking, I would see it eventually. But I didn't. So we trekked north a block and then west with no sign of Modern Toilet.
At a street corner, I spotted a group of four young Taipei guys sitting on their scooters chatting with one another. I figured maybe they could tell me how to get to Modern Toilet. I approached them and they could see that it was obvious I was a tourist. I asked the one closest to me if he knew where Modern Toilet was. He said he didn't know, so I thanked him and walked back over to my wife and kids to try and figure out what to do next. While we were talking amongst ourselves, another one of the scooter guys walked over to us and told us to follow him. He led us one block south and then we turned right to head west. And then, there we were, in front of Modern Toilet. For all I knew, we could have walked past it earlier, as it was not particularly conspicuous. The restaurant is not actually at street level. There's really just a door that leads you into a small room. Inside is a stair that leads you up to the next level which is the first of several floors occupied by the restaurant. We thanked the scooter guy profusely and headed in.
As you can see, it was already a big hit with the kids before we had even made it up the stairs.
Because of the passage of time, I don't remember what my wife and I ate. We both had one of the hot pots. Mine had seafood in it. I don't remember what she had. I believe the kids had the spaghetti.
As you can see, the novelty of Modern Toilet is that you sit on toilets instead of chairs, you eat your food out of miniature toilet bowls, and you sip your drinks out of plastic urinal cups.
Much to my delight, my wife really got into the spirit of things.
And then for some dessert!
The biggest surprise for me though turned out to be Modern Toilet's bathroom.
Yeah, sure, it wasn't a shock to me that the sink outside of the bathroom was a toilet bowl.
But then my daughter had to use the bathroom. Shortly after going in, she came out to tell me that there was no toilet bowl. I was like, "What do you mean there's no toilet?" So I took a peak inside and this was what I saw.
Yep, that's right. A toilet themed restaurant didn't even have a toilet bowl in its bathroom! So, all I could do was tell my daughter that if she had to pee, then she was going to have to squat over the urinal thingy in the floor that you see in the picture above.
In conclusion, Modern Toilet was a fun restaurant to eat at and the food was good enough to make it worth the trip there, though I did have some difficulty communicating with the waitress whose English was little better than my Chinese.
If you are planning to visit Taipei and want to put some interesting pictures up on your Facebook page, then definitely have a lunch or dinner at Modern Toilet. For all you ladies though, just remember, if you need to use the bathroom, you now know what is in store for you.
1 comment:
The toilet place is a riot!
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