Co Co. Sala - Washington, DC

Thursday, 9/10/09, 7:15 pm - Chinatown

Walking toward this restroom at the back of the restaurant, you pass a circle window on your left - a peak into the men's room. Rounding the corner, you're presented with this sign: men to the left, women to the right. There are no doors on the rooms and from the sink area, you can see the person across the way. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Inside the single stall, surrounded in almost all black, I missed the toilet paper holder. The roll was just on a shelf above the toilet. Odd.

Coming out to the single sink, you have another circle in front of you - the mirror, plus a tall, white ceramic column sink. The central stainless faucet was difficult to turn off. For all the attention to details and effort to be sleek, the garbage can seemed out of place as just one of those metal rectangular ones in the wall. The restaurant concept was carried into the bathroom, though I think a bit more attention could have been paid.

Here's more on Co Co. Sala.

Restaurants in Hotels

I don't using mention restrooms for restaurants in hotels because they're out of the control of the restaurant. But after seeing a few, I felt the need to comment on them, using my visit to J&G Steakhouse as a point of reference. If a restaurant decides to forgo its own bathroom in favor of the one in the hotel, the restroom really needs to be easily accessible. Now most of them are large and well maintained, but usually unremarkable.

The servers at Poste should hand out maps to find the restrooms in Hotel Monaco. I thought I might need a rescue team to find me when I was done. While the white and black bathroom worked with the modern hotel lobby (despite being up 2 floors), it was virtually impossible to find and not at all labeled.

The bathroom for Art and Soul is at least on the same floor in the Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel, but getting to it requires going through what looks like a fire door. Returning posed an obstacle when I couldn't figure out which heavy black door returned to the restaurant.

One of the best situated restrooms was at J&G in the new W Hotel. The bathroom is down a circular staircase close to the entrance of the restaurant. It does take a second to figure out which way to turn at the landing, but the bathroom isn't far. Here's a peak inside (which is much duller than the restaurant and the hotel lobby).