Toilet Talk: The Unsung Heroes of Restaurant Design

Hard-earned wisdom from eight weeks of obsessing over toilets, taps, and tiny details

When I first dreamed about Gina, I imagined beautiful plates, perfectly balanced cocktails, and the kind of room where you feel instantly at ease. What I didn’t picture was spending eight weeks deep in debates over toilet cisterns, baby-changing tables, and the exact placement of a soap dispenser. And yet, here we are - bathroom design has somehow claimed more of my brain space than the entire food menu.

Let’s talk toilets. Not the part that makes it to Instagram - the part that makes guests decide, often subconsciously, whether they’ll come back. It might sound dramatic, but I promise you this: you can serve someone the best meal of their life, and if they walk into a sticky-floored smelly bathroom with flickering lights and taps that don’t work? That’s the detail that sticks. I’ve been that guest. I’ve eaten incredible food in places where the state of the loo had me quietly questioning the state of their fridge. Your bathrooms speak volumes about your standards, especially the ones your customers can’t see.

Over the years, bathrooms have quietly evolved from being a pure necessity to becoming something closer to a design flex. They’ve become the space where restaurants show their personality and push boundaries - a cultural statement, even. Take Big Mamma’s bathrooms, where a mirror on the back of the door lets you catch a glimpse of the other side (trippy, but unforgettable). Or the original Flesh & Buns loos - the walls entirely covered in explicit anime. London, especially, has turned the toilet trip into a core part of the dining experience. The bar has been set high.

For me, the design process has been led by something much more practical: cleaning. I’m obsessive about the hidden nooks where grime can gather - I mentally run through how I’d clean each space before I sign off on any decision. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest: as a restaurant owner, you’ll find yourself cleaning the toilets from time to time. It’s part of the deal. In fact, one of my top five fears about opening a restaurant was: what if someone sh*ts up the wall? I’ve done some informal market research (asked my mates) and apparently, it’s very rare - so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Bathrooms are a lawless little corner of any restaurant. I’ve worked in places where the hand soap disappears like clockwork, where fittings get trashed, and even heard of people sliding mirrors into their bags on the way out. If you think nothing surprises you anymore, spend enough time around public loos, you’ll change your mind.

Our toilets are small, and I do wish we’d had more space to play with. Designing a bathroom is one thing; designing a bathroom on a tight floor plan is an exercise in humility. It’s also a reminder that restaurant design is full of trade-offs: you can’t have it all, so you focus on what matters most.

As opening day gets closer, I lie awake at night wondering: have we overthought it? Under-thought it? Should I have just let them put fish in hats on the wallpaper after all? (No. Definitely not.) There’s something uniquely vulnerable about designing spaces for strangers to have private moments. You can tweak a menu overnight, but once the tiles are down and the taps are set, there’s no quick fix for a bathroom that’s not quite right.

So here I am weeks later, still questioning every tile, tap, and toilet roll holder. I suppose that’s the nature of opening a restaurant: perpetual uncertainty, occasionally seasoned with conviction. In the end, you’ll just have to come and see for yourself. And if you don’t like the bathroom, feel free to offer your feedback... ideally along with some cash to renovate.

Today we talk toilets and tomorrow you’ll get a cheeky bonus recipe of our home version of a Pad Thai as a thanks for sticking around. It’s quick and easy to put together, a real mid week saviour in our house.

The Fish in Hats Incident