A waiter serving a set meal, which includes faecal-looking ice cream with mini plastic toilet bowls.

HONEY, let's celebrate by going to the toilet. That won't get you a slap in the face in Taiwan.

Modern Toilet is actually a restaurant in Taipei. It is part of an island-wide chain of 12 eateries with a toilet theme.

All 100 seats in the diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink faucets and gender-coded WC signs appear throughout the three-storey facility.

Customers eat soups, meat dishes and faecal-looking ice cream from mini plastic toilet bowls and drink out of small urinals. They wipe their hands and mouths using toilet rolls hung above their tables, which may be glass-topped jumbo bathtubs.

'Most customers will bring their cameras in because the place is quite special,' said Mr Yang Chung-chi, a manager at the restaurant in north Taipei told Reuters.

Owner Wang Tzi-wei opened his first Modern Toilet in 2004 after being inspired by a Japanese cartoon featuring restroom images and the toilet themes running through the food and drinks menus.

Modern Toilet draws on people ages 15 to 35, especially students from the three universities near MrYang's restaurant because they're 'easily excited', he said. He said older people just wouldn't get it.

'It's really unusual, so special that it doesn't gross me out,' said Betty Tsai, 16, a Taipei high school student trying Modern Toilet for the first time on a friend's recommendation.

But for a few customers, the toilet humour is too much. 'My son thought it was disgusting and didn't know if he could finish his food,' said Ms Lin Li-ju.

A waiter serving a set meal, which includes faecal-looking ice cream with mini plastic toilet bowls.
Managers say the restaurant's popularity shows that Taipei customers, who have a choice of theme-eateries that resemble jailhouses and hospitals, appreciate creative dining.

All 100 seats in the Modern Toilet diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs.

'In the evenings, we easily fill up,' Mr Yang said. 'Our headquarters is still looking at expansion.'

Bizarre restaurants are not just common in Taiwan. In Japan, there's a restaurant with a vampire theme and a chain of restaurants fashioned to resemble Catholic churches, says Gadling.com.

In Beijing you can dine in total darkness in the Stygian-themed Pitch Black (waitresses wear night goggles) and in Manila, there is Hobbit House, where the staff are all little people.

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'Hospital' restaurant's early death

SINGAPORE'S own bizarre restaurant, Aurum, closed in May after lasting barely two years.

The hospital-themed fine-dining restaurant came with surgical tables, golden wheelchairs for seating and staff in hospital garb.

Aurum's interior was designed by Concrete, a Dutch architectural firm responsible for the famous SupperClub in Holland.

A nearby bar served cocktails in drip bags and housepours from test tubes while bartenders wore surgical scrubs.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Sept 7, 2008.