Thisoldtoilet: Toilet Replacement Parts - New toilet-themed restaurant where diners eat out of bidets opens in China - This Old Toilet

You wouldn't expect to see your meal to come to you in a bowl like this - not until after you'd eaten it, that is.

But this is exactly the kind of experience that awaits diners at one of the many toilet-themed restaurants that are springing up across China in a craze for food that - hopefully- doesn't taste as it looks.

The latest loo eatery, which opened in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, at the end of August, serves up lavatorial delights such as brown, curly wisps of soft serve ice cream - as well as more standard noodle, meat and vegetable dishes.

Bog roll: Diners can choose from a menu of lavatory-themed dishes

All of them come in individual, toilet-like vessels, from bidets to potties to - in the case of the ice cream - little cups, where the plumbing at the back forms a dainty handle for diners to hold their end-of-meal digestif.

The restuarant itself is equipped to resemble a bathroom, with showers attached to the walls and seats that look like toilet bowls topped with cushions in the shape of large piles of poo.

Toilet restaurants have become popular across China, with cities including Chonqing, Shanghai, Kunming and Hangzhou boasting their own loo chains, and others in Korea and Japan.

Beijing's version - Pian pian man wu, which translates as 'House full of poo' - has an extensive menu covering dishes that also includes the apparently signature 'super constipation black dry s***' ice cream, in this case topped with red beans and sprinkles in a mini squat toilet and coming at a price of 26RMB (around £2.60).

Visitors may be surprised to find so may toilets in a restaurant, where many other eateries in China do not actually have their own toilet, and patrons are required to relieve themselves in public lavatories in the street outside.

WC decor: The walls are decorated to look like the inside of a bathroom

Groom of the stool: Waiters serve patients at seats that are adorned with poo-shaped cushions

Toilet bowl: Diners share food from bowls shaped like sinks, bidets and WCs

Toilet bowl: Diners share food from dishes shaped like sinks, bidets and WCs

Seated toilets like the ones that feature in the dinnerwear at these establishments are also less common in China, as hygiene tends to dictate a preference for squatters.

In Beijing, a municipal law literally states that 'Only two flies' are allowed in a public toilet at any one time.

Yet China is no stranger to quirky themed restaurants - including those of a less lavatorial nature.

Beijing boasts a string of weird dining experiences that include a Kung-fu themed restaurant, where waiters perform karate chops as they deliver dishes, a Hello Kitty restaurant, and an Eighties schoolroom restaurant where entry is only on production of ID that shows you would have been at school in the decade.

Outside of Asia, themed restaurants can be just as bizarre.

The Hospitalis restaurant recently opened in Riga, Latvia, giving the chance to eat cakes that look like human organs and bandages on a dentist's chair and be served by waiters in doctor and nurse uniforms - or opt to be tied in a straitjacket and have their meal spoonfed to them.