The who’s who of restaurant loos

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The Pod loos at Sketch in Mayfair are probably the most Instagrammed in the world. But if everything had gone to plan, they wouldn’t even exist. Originally the huge space behind the gallery and the restaurant was going to be a bar. But then, one night during construction, owner Mourad Mazouz woke in a panic convinced he was making a mistake. Instead of adding another bar to the two already planned, he thought why not install some statement bathrooms instead.

As Sketch (Bloomsbury), a new history of the landmark restaurant that opened in 2002, recounts, the 12 egg-shaped loos were inspired by sci-fi and constructed out of fibreglass by a Cowes yacht-maker whose initial response was “I do NOT make toilets”. The Pods aren’t even the fanciest loos at Sketch. That honour surely falls to the “Music Box” bathrooms on the first floor conceived by jewellery designer Mehbs Yaqub and decorated with Swarovski crystals.

Few chefs want to be outshone by their bathrooms. But the best examples reinforce the values of their restaurants and act as a marketing tool in the form of the #bathroomselfie. This phenomenon arguably reached its zenith when the pink floral and rainforest-themed powder rooms designed by Martin Brudnizki for the revamped Annabel’s in Berkeley Square became the spots to see and be seen.

Nevertheless, our fascination continues. Gemma Wardle’s Loos of London TikTok guides (79.6k followers) take us take us from the disco-themed loos at Jacuzzi in Kensington High Street to the baroque lavatories at Gloria in Milan – prime examples of the deranged bathrooms for which the Big Mamma group is famous.

Few chefs want to be outshone by their bathrooms

A tour of other standout bathrooms might include the nautical-themed WCs at Foxglove in Hong Kong; Brooklands in London, inspired by Concorde and racing cars; and the high-rise loos at what used to be called the Boom Boom Room at the Standard in New York, where views across the city were briefly eclipsed post-launch by views from the street of patrons doing their business. Privacy screens were promptly added. These days the most talked-about facility in New York is probably the handwashing station inside the entrance to Coqodaq, where diners are expected to ritually cleanse with Loewe soap before entering the “cathedral of fried chicken”.

Speaking of cathedrals, the hieratic loos at Sessions Arts Club in Farringdon were inspired by the cathedrals of Canterbury and Amiens. Stained-glass portraits on the confessional-like cubicle doors pay tribute to figures associated with the building, such as King George III, who initiated its construction, and George Harrison and Star Trek’s Jean Luc-Picard, two heroes of the architects (Ted and Oliver Grebelius) behind its refurbishment.

As for the most beautiful loos in town, I nominate The Park in Bayswater, the newest opening from Jeremy King. Located at the bottom of a grand staircase over which hang two lower panels (torso and legs) from Alex Katz’s Coca-Cola Girl, the honey-toned bathrooms designed by Shayne Brady (behind Arlington and The Maine) are filled with black-and-white Horst portraits and lit to make you look like a million bucks. “I always want our bathrooms to cocoon a guest and make them feel the prettiest version of themselves,” says Brady.

Plenty of bathrooms send you back humming a tune too. At Raffles at the OWO in Whitehall, guests encounter a James Bond score playlist. At Cycene at the Blue Mountain School in Shoreditch, a Roberts radio set to Radio 3 “provides a constant purring backdrop of familiarity”. At The Tent in Fitzrovia you get stand-up comedy from legends such as Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams. “We often hear laughter coming from the toilets when Richard Pryor’s routines are playing,” says chef John Javier. At Lyst in Denmark designed by Olafur Eliasson, what sounds like a cheery guest in an adjacent cubicle is actually a recorded soloist from a humming choir diddlee-dumming to traditional Danish songs.

Researching this piece, I got so used to listening out for avant-garde soundscapes that when I visited the bathrooms at Piraña in Mayfair, a Peruvian-Japanese restaurant where the tacos are as tasty as the sushi, I mistakenly took the echoey acoustics for choral music spliced with whale sounds. It turned out to be the extraction fan. Still, the two-dozen red-bellied piranhas circling the tank above the washbasins made up for it.  

@ajesh34