Remember that toilet-bowl theme restaurant in southern Taiwan, reported on by Japundit here and here, and reported on extensively up the world news services a few weeks ago?
Here is a photo I took at a small operation in one of south Taiwan’s night markets in Chiayi City, where a pretty woman runs a “squat toilet cup ice cream” dispenser on one of the main shopping streets in town. Passersby have their choice of chocolate or vanilla soft ice cream that is dispensed into light-green squat toilet-shaped plastic cups, seen here, all for a very affordable NT$25, which comes to about 75 cents in American money.
Pic’s a little big, don’t you think?
Sorry to everyone who had to sit through loading of the monster pic I mistakenly uploaded originally for this piece. One of the hazards of posting a group of articles late at night for pre-scheduled automatic posting is that you are not around to see the results until it is too late.
I missed the big pic last night, but I do have an update on this toilet ice cream story. I think Japundit has a real scoop here, and this posting marks the first news about the toilet ice cream “bowls” anywhere in the known universe, including ….we beat CNN, BBC, AP and Reuters to this fast-breaking summer non-story.
I went back to the sidewalk ice cream dispenser last night, it’s outside, not in a restaurant, and not connected to that infamous restaurant in Kaohsiung that you read about in the links above.
This is just an outdoor ice cream machine, sitting on the side of a popular shotengai (shopping street) in southern Taiwan, and the sign above the machine reads: TOILET BOWL ICE CREAM in Chinese characters, of course. Something like “mar ton bin chi lin.”
The bowls that hold the scoops of soft chocolate ice cream (vanilla is on tap too, and a mixed version of choco-vanilla in swirls as well…. but the bowls come in two versions, one is the Western crapper shown in the photo above, and the other, not pictured yet, but soon, soon, is the traditional Japanese squat toilet bowl, which is ubiquitous all over Asia, thanks to Japanese colonialism, WWII and toilet-themed AV videos. [Just kidding on that last one.]
In Taiwan, kids enjoy talking about shit and it’s not a dirty word here. Kids also like to draw what they call “shit marks” (da bien marku) when they doodle on pieces of paper at school and these shit marks actually look like a swirling scoop of ice cream on top of a pastry cone. Maybe that’s where this idea of selling “toilet bowl ice cream” cups on the street in Chiayi City came from?
I can tell you one thing: the ice cream lady is busy from 7 pm to 11 pm selling these squat cups and Western-style crapper cups, and the main market is, you guessed it, little kids, aged 3-10, walking down the street with their moms. [Dad is busy doing something else…]
Forgot price: NT$25 (New Taiwan dollars) per bowl, the equivalent of about 75 cents in the USA.
And you can keep the bowl as a souvenir and use it at home…
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/26/ice_cream_cups_cash_.html#comments
Japundit made BoingBoint.net
Next comes CNN, BBC, the world!
You ever look forward to a delicious toilet bowl full of ice cream? Sure you have! Everyone wants to eat out a toilet bowl, you can tell your friends that you just can’t get enough of that yummy toilet bowl food! Ok, maybe this is only something that is is happening in Taiwan but I’m sure it will catch on elsewhere.
An American friend in Tokyo, longtime expat there, 30 years, writes: Back in the 1960s, my air force buddies used to refer to squat-type toilets as
the “bombsight bay.”
Back when I first came here, we called it a “bombsight benjo” (benjo being a Japanese word for toilet).
Una coppetta di dubbio gusto
Pubblicato mercoledì 27 luglio 2005
Da oggi nelle gelaterie si potrà scegliere tra cono, coppetta e… w.c.
Succede già a Taiwan (dove d’altronde sta avendo successo il ristorante tutto arredato in tema-bagno).
Ice Cream … Pooper Scooper
There’s a “squat toilet cup ice cream” dispenser on one of the main shopping streets in Chiayi, Taiwan. Yeah, so, you get your ice cream in a scoop, that’s really a pooper. Just thought you’d all find it interesting.
Story VIA Japundit and Boingboing.net
OhGizmo!
You know … “pooper scooper” is the term I … (and a million other people) … use for the little spoon I use to clean my cat’s litter. However, it seems it’s taken on a whole new meaning now. Who knew?
A few weeks ago, a Taiwanese restaurant made the rounds of the global blogosphere for providing, er, ahem, toilet seating to its customers. Still incandescent from all the attention, thee have been a few spin-offs, the latest one of which comes from a small one-woman operation in one of south Taiwan’s night markets in Chiayi City, population 250,000, where one of far-flung correspondents took this photo.
One of the latest offerings is the Pee Goal - a new ‘must have’ for my yet-to-be-built “Man Room”. My “Man Room” will be the room in my house where the guys come over and watch ‘the game’ while consuming malty beverages, small batch bourbon and single-malt scotch.)
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/toilets/index.php#pee-goal-112810
http://www.teamdroid.com/archives/2005/07/26/ice-cream-toilet-bowl/
Gotta Go Potty? Visit The Toilet Bowl Restaurant
*News*
Toilet Bowl Ice Cream Cones!! Whoohoo! Just what I’ve been waiting for!
http://thebox.blogsome.com
I’m not exactly sure what the hell the deal is with Taiwanese people and putting food into toilet-shaped containers but this is just another example. If they don’t look like any toilets you’ve seen before, it’s cause these are the older models used in Asia where you had to squat over the toilets and not actually sit on them.
GREAT PHOTO OF SHOP SIGN HERE:
http://www.hitokiri.com/blog/archives/images/taiwan/toileticecream.html
The pooper scooper slurp heard around the world VIA Japundit. A real scoop!
The Marton serves food in bowls shaped like Western and Japanese squat toilets.
NOTE: The original inspiration came from the toilet-shaped spaceship in a Japanese cartoon.
http://skytg24.blogs.com/sky_tg24_pianeta_internet/2005/07/wc_tazza.html#comment-7614532
SKY TG24 Pianeta Internet
Link, approfondimenti, notizie e curiosità dalla Rete
Ice cream cups cash in on Toilet Bowl restaurant craze
Dan Bloom says: “You’ve read about the toilet-bowl theme restaurant in southern Taiwan, reported widely around the world by the news services a few weeks ago. “The restaurant was so popular among Taiwanese diners, young and old, that the owners open…
[…] ano es lo que tiene Clasificado bajo: T much — mmeida @ 9:25 pm No s si el helado es una m… o es que est que te c… Lo nico cierto es que el tema resulta algo […]
http://www.ohgenki.com/forums/attachment.php?s=dfb85e3e4960044e3851475d88830650&attachmentid=12541
http://www.funponsel.com/blog/archives/2005/07/27/toilet-bowl-ice-cream/
We are selling bathroom hardwares. Your pic looks so cutely.
[…] o e aiutandosi con i suoni. In quel di Taiwan, una signora piuttosto originale ha aperto una gelateria con delle coppette altrettanto singolari… Malinche produce da sempre text-games di […]
[…] Squat Toilet Seat Ice Cream. How appetizing. […]
Update: A reporter in Taipei notes:
“A Kaohsiung restaurant famous for its garish bathroom decor has opened a branch in Shilin in Taipei.
Marton — the name sounds like “toilet” in Mandarin — serves up pasta, rice curries and ice cream in miniature loos, bathtubs and Japanese-style squat toilets. Customers sit on real commodes decorated with fanciful ocean themes and are encouraged to stir up their meals so they look like, well …
“It’s delicious,” giggled Violet, 15, as she and three classmates dug into a pile of brown mush they swore was ice cream. “It’s special and funny,” friend Ivy added.
If a recent visit was any indication, the gimmick works. A score of happy teenagers and office workers slurped hot pot from purple toilets and picked at appetizers in plastic turd-shaped swirls. The tables — real porcelain sinks with glass covers — each contained piles of notes penned by satisfied customers, many of the scatological variety. “Our turds are really thick,” read one.
Marton is all about the atmosphere. Set meals consisting of soup, a main course and ice cream offer plenty of potential for play. Served in a light blue bathtub, a main course of seafood casserole nearly floated in its soggy, gray stew. All the better to stir up, but not very filling. Clever presentation aside, little distinguished this dish from similar fare that can be obtained at cheaper prices from Taipei’s legion of coffee shops. The melted cheese tasted artificial and the portion was on the small side. There were, however, two mussels buried along with their shells in the muck.
The ice cream, a small vanilla and chocolate swirl resembling a cartoon turd, came in a tiny squat toilet and tasted like the convenience store variety. This was disappointing, since Marton’s founder tested the bathroom concept with a roadside ice cream stand before opening his first full-blown restaurant in Kaohsiung. Perhaps these were bad choices. Branch manager Jessica Huang recommended the current favorite, creamy hot pot (日式濃牛奶鍋). The Marton No. 2 ice cream (馬桶2號) also looked intriguing. It features a scoop of strawberry ice cream, a chocolate-vanilla ice cream swirl and passion fruit sauce.”
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