A Guardian food critic has likened her post dinner toilet trip at a Bristol restaurant as akin to ‘Day Three at Glastonbury.’
Writer Grace Dent made a visit to Woky Ko kaiju Japanese tapas restaurant at Wapping Wharf during a recent trip to the city.
But although she rated the food, the trip to the ladies afterwards was, she said, not such a pleasant experience.
After enjoying her dinner of Katsu monkfish and Braised beef short-rib with a companion she ventured to the ladies.
As the restaurant is based in a shipping container, the toilets are shared and operated by customers using a passcode.
But the experience left Miss Dent wishing she’d booked at a restaurant with its own washroom facilities – and plentiful toilet roll.
In her restaurant review she said: “We left and joined the queue downstairs for the passcode-locked bathrooms, which serve a variety of local bars, had no loo paper and felt like no one’s responsibility.
“It was all a bit day three at Glastonbury – jolly, but directionless – and although I enjoyed myself, it was Saturday night and I wished I’d gone to a restaurant."
Miss Dent also questioned the use of re-purposed shipping containers being used as restaurants, describing them as ‘stark, rarely beautiful and never comfortable.”
She added: “On my way to Woky Ko: Kaiju in Bristol, I pondered why, at some point in recent times, we acquiesced to eating in shipping containers.
“Stark, stacked, re-purposed vessels, often left in previously unloved patches of Croydon, Milton Keynes, York and, obviously, Shoreditch. Rarely beautiful, never comfortable; this is strangely unhospitable hospitality.
“Chefs, however, seem to love shipping containers, because they’re a relatively affordable option in which to set up shop. Plus, they’re recycled. Chefs love talking nobly about sustainability – love it. On and on they chunter, saving the world, one food-scrap falafel at a time.”
She also took a swipe at the city’s harbourside, saying by 7pm on a Saturday – to anyone over 35 – it felt more like an ‘episode or The Magaluf Weekend overcome by a Walking Dead Horde’ than the ‘vibrant Harbourside community’ it is marketed as.
But although she did praise the food on offer at Woky Ko Kaiju, she added it wasn’t a place one would want to linger.
“Although the level of cooking is very high,” added Miss Dent, “I can’t say this is a place where one wants to linger.
“Like all restaurants jammed into shipping containers, it is, in estate agent-speak, “compact” and “cleverly appointed”: 40 covers, a noisy working kitchen, a sit-up bar, half a dozen staff and a queue out of the door, all in one small rectangular space. There’s nothing remotely romantic about Woky Ko: Kaiju."
