 Best Restaurant Bathroom Runner-up: X Lounge. |
Like Uma Thurman’s character in Pulp Fiction, we love it when we’re at a restaurant, and we go to the bathroom and find our food waiting when we return. You, dear readers, apparently just love going to that bathroom in the first place. You voted with gusto for "Best Restaurant Bathroom" (one reader even squandered her precious vote by declaring "I’m so glad you added this category!!!"). What earns a loo affection in the minds of the public, we wondered? That’s why we went to investigate the top three vote-getters. Not because we were hoping food would appear when we emerged.—Brendan Fitzgerald and Erika Howsare
Second runner-up: Ten
With its gray-on-gray minimalism, Ten’s restroom reminded us of an airport—though airports don’t usually pipe in tasteful techno that sounds like a sped-up version of the French pop act AIR. Indeed, a subtle sense of style permeated the privy as surely as the scent of aromatic oil. We figure Ten supporters must like the way toilets are in separate little rooms, rather than stalls; the instant arrival of hot water from the faucets; and the double-ply TP. And we figure the place might have lost some votes because of the toilet’s weak flush and the way the urinal is disconcertingly close to the doorway. But really, people—are these paper towels, so soft and absorbent you could mistake them for fine cotton, not worthy of your consideration? Perhaps you reached for one, stored in a basket between the sinks, and discovered that the "wheatgrass" in a small pot nearby was actually plastic. Horrors!
First runner-up: X Lounge
It’s witty, the way the X squeezes in a bit of self-promotion on the doors of its restrooms: "XX" for ladies, "XY" for the gents. And it’s titillating, the way the Lucite walls with peekaboo designs allow you to keep an eye—sort of—on that hottie you just chatted up at the bar before charmingly excusing yourself. What’s more, it’s pleasing, the way the neutral colors (grays and browns) join with natural elements (wood and fresh flowers) in an understated palette—though the concrete-block walls behind the toilets seem to our taste like a serious decorating misstep. But all this pales in comparison to the piece de resistance: a stainless-steel "urinal wall," nearly ceiling height, down which water flows in a trickle as constant as Niagara, though considerably more delicate. For such a fixture, the word "trough" seems entirely inadequate.
Winner: Zocalo
We admit that the charm of Zocalo’s sanitation station was not immediately apparent: Softsoap-brand handwash sat in its original packaging, and a tall pile of coarse paper towels sat in an open shelf set into the wall, with nothing in place to prevent the stack from toppling onto a wet patch across the counter. But perhaps the industrial look of your favorite local washroom (green concrete walls, warehouse lighting, the utility-alone toilet paper bar that juts from the wall in the women’s room) encourages its patrons to be industrious—as if the crew behind the Zocalo bathroom left off in the middle of their job so that you could get yours done. Efforts to give the two restrooms different characters—real sunflowers between the sinks and low-bottom stall doors in the women’s room; a private urinal cave and a scent of tea tree oil for the fellows—also help to draw your attention away from the rudimentary exterior of these restrooms. And washing our hands (after every trip, please) in the exuberant, Latin-painted sinks washed away the rest with a sense of privilege. Quite a W.C., voters.
