Moscow’s Crazy Toilet Cafe features seats made from
lavatories and cocktails served in mini urinals
A bowl of mushroom soup at the Crazy Toilet Cafe.
Photograph: Shaun Walker for the Guardian
Eating and defecation: two parts of life most people like to
keep well segregated. Not so the owners of a new Moscow cafe, where both the
interiors and the food are toilet themed.
Crazy Toilet Cafe opened on Friday in the Russian capital,
and will allow patrons to eat an array of dishes that can only be described as
faecal-inspired, served in toilet-themed crockery. Instead of seats, there are
about 50 real toilets for guests to sit on while eating.
The downstairs dining area at Crazy Toilet Cafe.
Photograph: Shaun Walker for the Guardian
Located on Arbat Street, a touristy, pedestrianised
thoroughfare lined with portrait artists, buskers and hustlers, the restaurant
admits it will probably mainly draw one-time novelty visitors rather than
repeat clients.
“We think people will walk past, think ‘What on Earth is
that?’ and then come in to check it out,” said general manager Inga
Yaroslavskaya. “It’s not everywhere you can eat good food from a toilet bowl
and drink from a urinal at very reasonable prices.”
The restaurant’s Crazy Lunch menu costs 500 roubles (£5) and
features three dubious courses each with a lavatorial theme: a brown and creamy
mushroom soup served in a toilet bowl, followed by a swirled sausage served
with three piles of steaming mashed potato. If visitors have not lost their
appetite by this point, they can finish it off with a bowl of whipped chocolate
ice cream.
There is no escaping the toilet theme on the drinks menu
either.
“We have a great range of hot cocktails served in mini
urinals,” said Yaroslavskaya. Even boring old green tea came served in a tiny
toilet bowl, in which it took on a disturbing yellowish hue.
The walls are decorated with faeces-themed cartoons, but
guests who need to use the toilet for real must use one of the three cubicles
at the back of the restaurant. The toilet bowls used as restaurant seating have
been sealed shut to prevent any over-excitable patrons taking things a bit too
far.
It isn’t, however, the first toilet-themed restaurant in the
world: there is a whole chain of loo-themed Modern Toilet cafes in Taiwan, but
Yaroslavskaya believes Crazy Toilet Cafe is the first in Europe.
Sausage and mash, part of the Crazy Lunch menu.
Photograph: Shaun Walker for the Guardian
The cafe’s owner is Alexander Donskoi, formerly mayor of the
northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk. After announcing a rather implausible
presidential run in 2007, he was promptly arrested and given a three-year
suspended sentence. After spending eight months in jail, he was released and opened the
G-spot sex museum in Moscow. Now, he has moved on from sex to toilets.
Asked whether the cafe was aimed at genuine coprophiliacs as
well as those with merely a morbid curiosity, Yaroslavskaya said the doors are
open to all who behave in a civilised manner.
“It’s hard to identify them just by looking at them, so of
course they are welcome if they behave normally. We opened a strange
restaurant, so it’s natural that some strange people might want to come.”
source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/30/russia-crazy-toilet-cafe-restaurant
by Shaun Walker
http://www.thisoldtoilet.com
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