Seconds Please

It’s strange to think that anyone would ever go to a restaurant to check out the restroom, but I am going to recommend you check out this restaurant because of the restroom AS WELL AS the great food and décor.

Beatrice & Woodsleys is a great little restaurant designed to look like an Aspen Grove.  The tables in the bar look like tree stumps, there are chainsaws sticking out of the walls, flower pedals are  strewn about on the floor – the place is beautiful. The lighting is warm and inviting.  The restaurant also serves fantastic food small plate style.  Instead of one large meal  you order numerous smaller plates.  It works great at this restaurant because it allows you to taste all the fantastic dishes and not eat so much that it makes you sick. Beatrice & Woodsley’s really is the kind of place you just want to spend hours hanging out.

So the restaurant has good food and a nice atmosphere. However they also have something that their competitors don’t:  An awesome restroom. Yes, the restroom is that special. Normally a restroom is a restroom.  Some restrooms are bigger than others and  some are nicer than others but they are all still just restrooms.  It is  a necessity that every restaurant has one, but most restaurants don’t see it as a selling point. That is not the case at Beatrice and Woodsleys.

First of all,  the set-up of the restroom is unique. The stalls are separate from the sinks and mirrors. The sinks are actually visible to the restaurant and the stalls are hidden behind a giant tree trunk. Unless you know where you are going you probably wont even notice the small handles on the outside of the tree that open to the men and women’s stalls hidden behind. If you do manage to find the toilets and do your business, you are then faced with the sinks.  Completely visible to the restaurant, they have placed two sinks equipped with pulley systems.  You pull one side and the water flows down, you pull the other pulley and the water stops. The on/off is not instantaneously and needless to say it takes people a while to get used to it. The entertainment value of watching people figure out the system is enough to keep you laughing for hours (once YOU figure it out of course).

Aside from the entertainment value, I give the restaurant a lot of credit for coming up with this attraction. First of all, the restaurant is small with  limited space. Creating large bathrooms would take away from their seating space dramatically. They came up with a very creative way to showcase the visible area to the patrons in the restaurant and keep the hidden stalls very bare bones and functional.  Next, It’s extremely hard to make a restroom something to talk about and they did that amazingly well. I can’t remember the last time I even mentioned a restaurant’s restroom in conversation let alone wrote about it. They have received some great publicity and I’ve had friends that have even gone there  JUST to check out the restrooms.  The best part about this whole concept is that they have managed to create this attraction without having it over-shadow the restaurant. Even though the  sinks are visible to patrons, they aren’t obtrusive.  When glancing around the restaurant, the theme is consistent and you wouldn’t even assume there were restrooms behind the big tree.

I wont go on and on about it, because it really is something you just need to experience yourself. It isn’t often that we see this kind of creativity in something that is not generally considered creative.  So check it out.. and let me know if you are as impressed as I am!