As someone who admittedly has to pee fairly often (well, I do consume over the recommended amount of water per day), I always prefer to patronize establishments that have restrooms. Typically, if you are going to a sit-down restaurant in New York City, you can pretty much be guaranteed a restroom. With cafes and bakeries, though, this is very much on a case-by-case basis; it’s never a guarantee, and the vast majority of them will not provide a restroom for customers. So the rare times when I do find a restroom for customers, like at the popular bakery Almondine in Dumbo (likely one of my all-time favorite almond croissants, plus their hot Valrhona chocolate is more than worth it), or Paper Sons Cafe (a relatively new, family-owned cafe with excellent coffee drinks) in Manhattan Chinatown, I always appreciate it so much. And when I share these businesses with other people, whether it’s in public reviews or just by mouth, I always make sure to highlight it. It’s just a really big nice-to-have for a smaller establishment like a cafe or bakery. It ultimately just shows kindness and empathy to the customers who are frankly keeping you in business.

So you can imagine that I was pretty annoyed when I found out that a Japanese restaurant that had opened in East Village last year called Okiboro House of Udon, had no restroom. I was shocked. You’re charging $23 a bowl for udon, and you cannot even be considerate enough to your customers and have a bathroom? For the first 6-8 months when this place first opened, I was constantly seeing it all over social media; it had lines around the block and waits of 2-3 hours. People would just stand there for hours on end to sit and eat there for 30-40 minutes and leave. I knew I wanted to eventually go once the hype was over. So my pregnant friend suggested that we go there for dinner tonight; neither of us had ever heard of Himokawa style udon before, and we obviously had never had it. Unlike regular udon, with its fat and rounded noodles, Himokawa udon is a traditional, wide, and flat udon noodle that is known for its smooth, chewy texture and is often served hot or cold with a dipping broth. I said we could — but only if we went right at open time to avoid any potential wait. I warned her, especially given she’s pregnant, that it didn’t have a bathroom, but she said she could go to a cafe nearby after where her friend works, and she could use the restroom there. For her sake (and well, partly mine), I checked the latest Google reviews to see if they had added a bathroom. Unfortunately, we were out of luck: all the latest reviews still noted and complained about the lack of restroom. The owner kept responding to the reviews noting the lack of restroom and saying that because the restroom they had was only accessible through the kitchen, customers were not allowed to go through the kitchen to use it given that violated NYC health code. So, they could not allow customers to use it.

I felt like this was a total cop out, and frankly, it’s just bullshit. They would have known this was a law before deciding to lease the space and take over it as a restaurant. They could have easily incorporated a restroom into the design of the restaurant while it was being constructed like every other restaurant does. They’re making an excuse for something that they were just too lazy and cheap to do. I went to look up the local health code laws, and I found this out: If a food service establishment has 20 or more seats and opened after 1977, it must provide a toilet for its customers. I quickly counted the number of seats in the small space that is Okiboro House of Udon: those bastards — they have 18 seats! It’s like this purposely did this just to avoid having to build a damn bathroom that was accessible to customers!!

Was the food good? Yes. Was it good enough for me to want to come back given all the other incredible food establishments across New York City, plus the fact it lacks a basic bathroom? No.

The hype has died down. Okiboro House of Udon — good luck to you.