Poopiest Birthday Ever

“This is the poopiest birthday I’ve every had!” Annika said. She was being quite literal.

Well almost.

Before the first of the year, the girls had heard of a restaurant called Modern Toilet and for the next couple of weeks they kept pestering Julie and me to take them. We thought that Annika’s fourteenth birthday would be the perfect opportunity to surprise them. Annika knew that we were taking her out, but didn’t know where. We took the train down to the Mon Kok neighborhood, turned the corner, and there it was: Modern Toilet. Annika’s face broke into a giant smile when we she saw where we were. Elise jumped up and down.

We didn’t stop smiling and giggling and making faces for the next hour.

Modern Toilet is exactly what you might imagine. It’s a concept restaurant built around the theme of . . . wait for it . . . yup: toilets.

In loo (pun intended) of chairs, we sat on toilets. Our table was a bathroom sink with a piece of glass on top of it. Food came in either a bedpan or a ceramic pot shaped like a toilet. Our drinks came in glasses shaped like a men’s urinal.

The tile walls were festooned with a wide variety of colorful toilet seats and a long line of urinals that lit up. The pendant lights were shaped like plungers. The music that was playing overhead was periodically interupted by the sound of flushing toilets.
The piece de resistance though was the dessert. It came in a dish shaped like a Chinese squat toilet and of course it was . . . yup, a heaping mound of soft-serve chocolate ice cream.

Yum.

The food was okay, the service was so-so, but the experience was one-of-a-kind. If you live in Hong Kong, it is one of those things that you just have to do.

Once.

The girls seem to have fun. We took a lot of pictures.

The only thing that could have made the experience more awesome was if we’d brought along a table full of adolescent boys.

Happy fourteenth birthday, Annika.

We love you.

-Jack