Modern Toilet Restaurant

This guide to Ximending's Modern Toilet Restaurant in Taipei opens with a Hong Kong customer so convinced by the decor he used a seat as a real toilet, then traces the chain back to Wang Zi-wei, a Taiwanese banker who quit his job in two thousand four to sell ice cream on paper squat toilets, inspired by a Japanese manga. You'll hear how the joke grew into a chain of some nineteen branches across Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland, and how the pandemic thinned it down. Take a look at the plungers and feces-shaped lamps hanging overhead.