Displaying fancy toilet seats studded with flowers and shells, colorful bathtubs, faucets, mirrors and shower curtains, the well-lit window in Kaohsiung looks like a showroom for a trendy bathroom brand.
But this is a restaurant.
It's unusual theme is proving a draw for customers eager to eat food off plates and bowls shaped like Western loo seats as well as Japanese "squat toilets."
PHOTO: AFP
Marton Theme Restaurant, named after the Mandarin word matong for toilet, has become a hit since its opening in May last year.
Though bathroom decor seems a bizarre way to whet the appetites of diners, the idea has been so successful owner Eric Wang opened a second and bigger branch just seven months later.
"We not only sell food but also laughter. The food is just as good as any restaurant but we offer additional fun," says 26-year-old Wang, who gave up a career in banking to launch the business.
"Most customers think the more disgusting and exaggerated [the restaurant is], the funnier the dining experience is," he says.
The top orders are curry hot pot, curry chicken rice and chocolate ice cream because, well, "they look most like the real thing," Wang says.
The price ranges from NT$150 to NT$250 (US$8) for a meal set including soup and ice cream.
Customers, however, flock to Marton Restaurant mainly for its quirky dining wares and interior decor.
"This is such a funny and strange restaurant," says patron Chen Bi-fang, while sitting atop a colorful toilet seat -- the standard chair at the restaurant.
She sits by a table converted from a bathtub with a glass cover while looking at a wall decorated with neon-lit faucets and urinals turned into lamps.
Chen first came to the restaurant after seeing it featured on television and has brought nine co-workers along for lunch on her second visit.
"I think this is the most special restaurant I've ever been to. The menu also looks good and I'd like to try more next time," says newcomer Cheng Hung-chi, who found out the restaurant over the Internet and took her mother and brother with her.
They are exactly the kind of customers owner Wang are counting on -- drawn by novelty and who return with friends in a city crowded by a wide variety of restaurants.
"Our restaurant is the first and only of its kind in Kaohsiung and that gives us an advantage in the saturated market here. Our major challenge is to lure customers back after the initial fun," he says.
Other gimmicky restaurants using themes such as a prison, zombies and even Mao Zedong (毛澤東) achieved quick success but folded within a few years after the novelty wore off.
To make sure his investment wouldn't go down the pan, Wang first tested the water for the toilet food gimmick by peddling ice cream in toilet-shaped cones in street booths four months before opening his restaurant. It was an instant hit as he sold up to 1,000 ice-cream cones daily for NT$30 dollars apiece, which is 5 to 10 dollars higher than a regular one.
His idea came from a popular Japanese comic featuring a robot doll fond of eating excrement in ice cream cones.
"The success with `toilet ice cream' was a leap of faith for me to quit the stable but boring banking job and start my business despite strong objections from my family," he says.
The young entrepreneur is planning to expand his business to other cities in the country though franchising after adding more items to the menu.
"After the curiosity fades, we have to hold on to customers with upgraded food and services," Wang says.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS