DavidsTea: Where men’s and women’s restroom signs fall in love

Lately, I’ve been bad about fueling my tea obsession because my espresso obsession has gotten out of hand, but after dinner with Herr Liebe, we passed DavidsTea (275 Bleecker St.), a Canada-based tea store, and some decaf rooibos sounded like a much better idea than a keep-you-up-all-night coffee.

DavidsTea has a very Tiffany-esque color scheme (think robin’s egg blue and white), and that carries over into its sleek restroom, which has white brick-shaped tiles, as well as a wall made of gorgeous circular light aqua tiles.The rest of the restroom’s interior was minimalistic, so not much to report, but the best feature was the sign on the outside of the door. DavidsTea’s restroom is a one-room stall type of deal, and it’s labeled as co-ed with the universal men’s and women’s restroom sign graphics — but they’re holding hands! And the women’s restroom sign is even tilting her leg to the side, clearly enthralled with her handsome men’s restroom sign friend. I doubt this means DavidsTea is condoning men and women entering the one-room restroom together, but I got a kick out of the sign. It’s always nice to see a little restroom detail you’ve never seen before.

DavidsTea was a lovely way to spend an hour or so after dinner, and the bright and airy store was a nice change from the typical dark, den-like NYC coffee shop. TWO large teas cost a mere $6 — a veritable steal in Manhattan — and DavidsTea offers a huge, color-coded wall stocked with more than 150 tea selections. The basic rooibos I ordered wasn’t the best tea I’ve ever had, but I would like to go back and try some of the other more adventurous varieties, including birthday cake (!!!) and creme caramel rooibos.

Restroom Rating: [rating=3]

Richard Rodgers Theatre: Angels watched me drop my ticket in the toilet

Broadway show + great bathroom + hilarious blunder = Porcelain Press trifecta. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” currently starring Scarlett Johansson, is nearly three hours long, so I arrived at the Richard Rodgers Theatre (46th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues) early for a final pit stop. And in my haste, I dropped my ticket in the toilet.

The Richard Rodgers Theatre has a beautiful ladies’ room, starting with the arched entryway that leads downstairs (unfortunately, the picture is blurry). An illuminated box indicates you’re headed in the right direction, and the ceiling and arch are decorated with gold molding that’s very Broadway theatre-esque. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t plan to blog about the bathroom, especially when I descried the dreaded restroom attendant as I descended the stairs, but then — hark! — the herald angels appeared, chubby cherubs scattered all over the walls, which were painted blue with puffy white clouds. These angels, though, were more rubenesque than cherubic, looking sort of like adults morphed with children. The rest of the bathroom was nondescript — stainless steel stalls, white tile floors — but when a restroom’s got crazy angels on its walls, it doesn’t need much else to score points. Except — hark again! — the Richard Rodgers Theatre made the smart move of having tons of stalls in the women’s room, meaning I shouldn’t have felt so rushed that I dropped my ticket in the toilet.

About that. Yeah. I was trying to put gloves in my pocket, wrap earbuds around my iPhone, and hang on to my hat, wallet and ticket all at the same time, and the god of this heavenly restroom was having none of it. The paper soared out of my hand, and I wisely let it go, rather than dropping more valuable items in the toilet. I snatched it out before the whole thing got wet and gingerly carried it into the theatre by a dry corner. The poor ushers, though, had no idea and grabbed the whole thing with both hands. At least the ticket had  fallen in freshly flushed water… (Apparently I have problems with theatre restrooms. Like that time I dropped my wallet down a crevasse when I went to see “Mary Poppins” at the New Amsterdam Theatre.)

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”? I really enjoyed the show, and it was a treat to see a star perform in a classic play. The set was also gorgeous, and they did a fantastic job using the lighting to show evening progress into a stormy night.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Abrana Marie’s Norte: New Mexico meets Peru in a Williamsport restroom

Knowing my penchant for Mexican cuisine, my parents had wanted to take me to Abrana Marie’s Norte, a New Mexican restaurant in Williamsport (247 Campbell St.), for quite a while.

Nothing at Abrana Marie’s was fancy, from the decor to the food presentation to the restroom. The restaurant itself is in a plain old house in one of Williamsport’s less posh neighborhoods, and they unwisely draw the blinds, which makes the place seem a bit forbidding — it’s actually quite homey inside, in a kitschy way. Abrana Marie’s restroom had a standard toilet, sink and trash can. They did try with decorations: flowers above the mirror, a pastel clock printed with pottery and cacti, and a weaving that made me think of Peru and not New Mexico (the people are wearing brimmed hats, and there’s an alpaca). Despite these aesthetic efforts, the restroom and its walls felt very bare, especially compared to the dining area, which was covered with sombreros and dream catchers (and space heaters, because their heat is apparently on the blink).

Abrana Marie’s won’t win awards for interior decorating, but the cuisine is amazing — again, not fancy, but so delicious that I keep telling my mother that I’ll come back to visit sooner than planned if they take me to Abrana Marie’s. I had chiles rellenos enchiladas. Yeah. A chile relleno INSIDE an enchilada. And then smothered with green chile sauce, and accompanied with rice and refried beans. Sure, it sounds heavy, and it was, but it was magical, perfectly savory, an explosion of cheesy wonderfulness and all sorts of other descriptions that don’t actually tell you how it tastes because I’m a bathroom blogger, not a food blogger. I definitely found my new favorite restaurant in Williamsport, tied with Franco’s Lounge; this will make things easier when my friends turn to me to decide where we should go for dinner. Abrana Marie’s, anyone?

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]

Brandy Library: Classy man den keeps it classy in the restroom…sort of

After one of our typical Terroir Tribeca outings, Rosee and I hit up nearby Brandy Library (25 North Moore Street), which is exactly what it sounds like: a veritable spirits library, lined all around with dark wood shelves stocked with bottles of bourbon, scotch, whisky and the like.

Brandy Library did a great job with the restroom, beginning with a painting of distillery equipment on the wall between the men’s and women’s rooms. The women’s room was quite spacious (I heard differently about the men’s room), and all of the walls were made of a rich wood paneling that matched the bar and lounge area. A beautiful hammered copper sink was set into a beige marble counter; the faucet and handles were intentionally installed off-center, which was quirky. A wooden tray held paper towels, stamped with bourbon paraphernalia (like a barrel), that matched the drink coasters used at the bar. Decorations included a vase of tropical flowers, those library-style lights with pull chains and pale, textured pieces of art that, at first glance, I thought were amorphous shapes but are actually images of women looking directly down at their naked bodies. And now that I look at the photos, I realize it’s very, very obvious.

Brandy Library was crowded with New York Times-reading, suit-wearing Wall Street types, making it very much the type of place where Rosee and I should spend the bulk of our after-hours time. This classy man den is definitely the most masculine venue I’ve been to in NYC: dark everything, big couches, lots of leather, and a hefty menu covering endless varieties of hard liquor, from $10 to $200 a glass (TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS A GLASS). I had a sip of Rosee’s $20 Bowmore scotch whisky, and was surprised by how delightfully smoky it was (that’s how my limited my knowledge of bourbon is). Still, I can’t get past the punch-you-in-the-gut smell of most liquor, so I’ll stick with lapsang souchong tea when I want a little smoke. I ordered the “wakeup call,” what you’d think would be a girly cocktail – a blend of vanilla vodka, espresso, chocolate and coffee liqueur – but it was all kinds of bitter (in a good-ish way), making it a manly girly cocktail, if such a thing exists. The bartender gave us a complimentary tray of cheese puffs, which were crazy delicious. I know you don’t typically do cocktail pairings, but when I took a sip of my bitter cocktail after a bite of cheese puff, it tasted exactly like my mother’s chocolate cream puffs. Mmmmmm.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Café Sabarsky: Linzertorte with a side of smiling paper towels

Time Out’s “1000 Things to Do in New York” regularly saves me from boredom. K and I had both had productive but mundane weekends, and when Sunday afternoon rolled around, we needed an adventure: enter Café Sabarsky, a Viennese-style cafe in the Neue Galerie (86th Street and Fifth Avenue), which exhibits early 20th century German and Austrian art and design pieces.

Neue Galerie’s website describes the cafe as a recreation of the “important centers of intellectual and artistic life at the turn of the century,” and it certainly looks the part, with dark wood paneling, a grand piano, a marble fireplace and bizarre wooden frames designed to help you hold and read a newspaper. The downstairs restroom, though? Not so much. It’s all white and black, and the sink area, which I liked very much, is quite sleek, with slightly unique faucets installed in the walls — but “white,” “black” and “sleek” are not words that come to mind when I think of turn-of-the-century Europe. Vintage posters hung outside the restroom entrances, and that was appropriately museum-y. What I liked best was the paper towel dispenser, which looked like it had a face, and a cheerful, smiling one at that. (I thought cars had faces when I was 8; that is way more appropriate than thinking paper towel dispensers have faces when you’re 28…)

K and I split slices of quark cheesecake and linzertorte, which were both divinely beautiful and supremely delicious, and worth their $9 pricetags. We certainly enjoyed the traditional linzertorte, but we were especially excited about the quark cheese; you should read about magical quark cheese here. We also each had a cup of very strong Viennese coffee, which ain’t Starbucks, kids. I wished I hadn’t already planned to make gluten-free mac&cheese that evening, because every entree that came out of the kitchen looked and smelled incredible, especially the variety of sausages. All in all, Café Sabarsky was a great — albeit pricy — way to stave off the Sunday doldrums.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

Bar Veloce: Ordinary wine bar, ordinary restroom

Lady Ra Ra and I have this problem where the days we get together coincide with torrential downpours. This time, after dining at Outback Steakhouse, we needed to find a nearby spot to continue our evening — Bar Veloce (7th Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets) was not far, but because we tried Trailer Park first (it was packed), we were both toting a whole lot of water in our shoes by the time we sat down for a glass of wine, squelching and sloshing our way through the rainy streets of Manhattan.

Bar Veloce has a dimly lit, den-like, date night-y vibe — very much what you’d expect of a NYC wine bar — but the restroom is a snoozefest. I took a not-so-discreet photo of the restroom door (you can’t hide an iPhone camera flash in a dark venue, and after two years of bathroom blogging, I’m so over caring anyway), which was the only mildly interesting feature: a black-and-silver placard indicated that the “WC” was for both genders. After taking the photo, I discovered the door was locked; a bus boy, who probably wondered why this weirdo was snapping pics of the potty, told me there was another restroom hidden in an alcove. It was tiny (you can see all of it in the photo, except right where I’m standing, and my back was against the door) and ordinary: ordinary toilet, ordinary sink, ordinary black-and-white tile floor and ordinary Pepto Bismol pink soap. The soap dispenser was one of those weird ones where you have to push directly upward on a peg at the bottom to release a stream of soap. Although you don’t see that type of dispenser every day, I wouldn’t call it exciting.

Lady Ra Ra and I had a lovely evening at Bar Veloce, but it had little to do with the wine bar itself, except that it gave us a place to sit and chat for a while, inside and out of the rain. By the time we finished our glasses of wine and left, our feet were still cold and wet, and all I could think about were my L.L.Bean Wicked Good slippers.

Restroom Rating: [rating=1]

Lenox Coffee: Mirror, mirror on the restroom wall

Harlem is getting so fancy, gentrifying even more in the four years I’ve lived in Manhattan. Among the not-so-new-anymore entrants like Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster and Tonnie’s Minis way-better-than-Magnolia-Bakery cupcakes is Lenox Coffee (129^th Street, just east of Lenox Avenue), which opened in late 2011 and is currently expanding.

Inside, Lenox Coffee looks very much like a pre-war Manhattan apartment, mine included, with brick walls and tin ceiling panels. I’d ended up at Lenox Coffee to work on the Porcelain Press and keep Mariez company while she studied for the New York bar exam, so naturally, I explored the coffee shop’s restroom – and it was fabulous. The door itself was non-descript, but it was adjacent to another door that led to Lenox Coffee’s backroom; that door hilariously looked like the entrance to someone’s house, complete with steps taking you up to the landing. The bathroom’s color scheme is simple: off-white tile walls with a band of dark gray tiles, and the floor is made of tiny hexagonal tiles. A framed antique map of NYC’s Mount Morris Park neighborhood – just south of Lenox Coffee – hangs on one wall. But the best part is the mirrors, which are all over the walls, reflecting in each other; each is a different size and has a unique antique frame.

A chocolate fiend, I judge all coffee shops by their mochas. Lenox Coffee’s was fine, but my heart sank as soon as I saw a Stumptown Coffee Roasters sign on their door. Super-popular Stumptown is just not my favorite; it tastes too bitter to me, and covers up too much of the chocolate flavor of my mocha. Still, I loved the décor and neighborhood vibe of Lenox Coffee so much that I look forward to going back for a long morning of blog work.

I’ll close with a plug for Olde Good Things: if you want to fake Lenox Coffee’s pre-war tin ceiling look at your own abode, check out their awesome mirrors and other tin products. I’ve had my mirror since 2009, and it’s one of my favorite things that I own.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Kitchenette: A vintage restroom fit for Grandma

Kitchenette, both the uptown and downtown locations, is one of my favorite brunch spots. It’s got unique menu options and a homey aesthetic vibe — think pink lemonade in Mason jars — that extends right into the old-fashioned restroom (I’ll focus here on the location closest to my neighborhood: Amsterdam at 123rd Street).

Kitchenette’s restroom is decorated very much like you’d expect a grandma’s kitchen or bathroom to be in the 1940s or 1950s. A white chair rail splits the walls between mint green tile and a vintage mustard yellow wallpaper covered with ivy, cherries and teapots. The floor is black-and-white checks, creating perfect pattern overload that the stylists over at J.Crew would go crazy for. A rusty white metal table in the corner is set above a metal basin stocked with extra rolls of toilet paper — I can just see a grandmother, decked out in curlers and a housecoat, plopping a ball of dough on the table and rolling it out thin to make a pie crust. The strip of metal you’re supposed to push when you open the door (is there a name for that?) is white and painted with a delicate floral pattern straight from an antique set of fine china. The folks at Kitchenette know that they’ve got a captive audience in the restroom: a framed collage of letters from customers hangs above the toilet, and a rainbow printout lets you know you can follow Kitchenette on Facebook and Twitter.

My favorite Kitchenette dish was a Mexican-style egg wonderfulness served over polenta — looks like it’s not on the menu anymore, but that’s fine, because everything I’ve had at Kitchenette has been delicious. A warning to those with a sweet tooth as big as mine: when you enter the restaurant, you walk past a HUGE glass case full of every baked good imaginable, and everything looks amazing. And it is. I could write an entire post about the chocolate checkerboard cake. You’ll likely be too full to sample anything, but you might luck out and have a guy take you on a first date there, just for cake.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Thai Chai-Yo: Do you want Listerine with that pad thai?

Lofty came to town for a week or so, and I hadn’t seen her in nearly a century, so to make up for lots of lost time, we stayed out until 6 a.m. after a reunion party at Stout NYC. That meant the next day was completely spent — we finally met up with a couple of friends at the High Line in the evening, followed by a late-ish dinner at Thai Chai-Yo (9th Avenue, between 24th and 25th Streets) before I took my lifeless self home to roll back into bed.

To borrow my mother’s favorite meaningless adjective, Thai Chai-Yo’s restroom was…interesting. You pass by a large glass panel printed with a painting that’s essentially American folk art straight out of the 1840s (I may be off by a decade, but trust me on this one; I studied the “fashion history” section in the encyclopedia extensively in middle school). What that kind of art has to do with Thai cuisine is not just beyond me — pretty sure it’s beyond all of us. Amusing, though. The restroom’s shiny door is marked with a leaf-bedecked “Toilet” placard printed with a swirly, cartoon-ish font. Inside, the restroom’s walls are covered with gorgeous iridescent blue / green / purple tiles — honestly, some of the most beautiful tiles I’ve seen, and photos don’t do them justice. Two round mirrors hung on the walls, and the faucet handles had a unique angled shape, making the sink hardware sort of look like a penguin diving into the icy Southern Ocean around Antarctica. (Why’s this the first time I’m learning about the Southern Ocean? I digress.) What really took Thai Chai-Yo’s restroom over the top? There’s a giant Listerine bottle and tiny plastic cups hanging out above the sink next to a box of tissues. Hahahaha. When’s the last time you saw Listerine at a restaurant? I wonder if they had Q-tips, Tylenol and toothbrushes stocked somewhere.

Thai Chai-Yo put pretty fresh flowers on the tables in the dining room. Nothing else memorable to report. Predictable chicken pad thai.

Restroom Rating: [rating=3]

Delmonico’s: Disappointing restroom at America’s first restaurant…but the mushrooms!

During my childhood, my parents celebrated their wedding anniversary with well-done (eep!) Delmonico steaks and a bottle of wine that they stored in the freezer and sipped their way through until their next anniversary. We weren’t a family of steak eaters, yet the Delmonico cut has been part of my vocabulary for as long as I can remember. Imagine my surprise when I learned, thanks to Time Out’s “1000 Things to Do in New York,” that the Delmonico steak originated in New York City at the eponymous Delmonico’s (56 Beaver St.), which also brought the world classic culinary delights such as baked Alaska and lobster Newburg.

Delmonico’s is gorgeous and everything you’d expect from “America’s first restaurant.” Inside, it’s essentially a wealthy gentleman’s uber-posh bachelor bad: dark wood, antique-style furnishings and decorations, big chairs, high ceilings, plush carpet, endless bottles of wine behind glass doors, and the quiet murmur of refined diners and clattering silverware. But the restroom? Wow. First of all, the restaurant doesn’t actually have one, so you have to traipse over to the bar – it’s conveniently connected to the restaurant, but as soon as you walk through the door, you’re transported out of your classy evening and into a night at the bar with the pals, in all of its loud, cold, beer-scented glory. They sort of kept up the steakhouse vibe in the restroom, with a dark cherry entrance and red walls inside, and it’s decorated with an antique mirror and a print of a Victorian lady carrying red flowers and a lacy red parasol. But the wallpaper outside was too modern – yellow and green Rothko-style paint strokes – and the sink and fixtures were bland. There was a cool floral lighting fixture above the sink, but its smooth lines made me think Roaring Twenties rather than Victorian Age. Delmonico’s restroom was a Porcelain Press letdown; I had looked forward to having an awesome restroom review to complement a great story about my experience, but alas…

Delmonico’s restroom may be sub-par, but dinner was great. Granted, I was so excited to eat the originals of foods I’d long heard about that it didn’t matter how delicious they were (and the lobster Newburg, for one, was not terribly exciting). The Delmonico steak was perfectly rare, thought, and the side of mushrooms, ordered separately, was likely my favorite dish (yes, Mom, mushrooms). Lactose-intolerant girl had to skip most of the baked Alaska’s delicate banana gelato, but the apricot jam-spiked walnut cake and meringue were heavenly on their own – an incredible combination of flavors. We also ordered two good half-bottles of wine from the extensive wine list, no thanks to our otherwise helpful and entertaining waiter, who kept pushing his own wine agenda. Food-wise, Delmonico’s didn’t offer up the best meal of my life, but from a pure experience perspective, it was tons of classy fun.

Restroom Ratings: [rating=2]