Noisy Taverna Opa Toilets Almost Too Rambunctious to Review

Taverna Opa Restaurant
9101 International Drive
Orlando, FL USA 32819
www.tavernaoparestaurant.com

Where is it?

From the main entrance, head left through the chaotic, music and dancer-filled dining room and into the bar area. When you're almost to the back wall of the bar (but not quite at the entrance where you will enter the patio service area), head right down a little hallway there. You'll find the toilets there.

What's it like?

This Greek restaurant chain, which started in Miami and opened a location in Orlando's Pointe Orlando mall in 2007, is a wild and loud place, to say the least. The interior mixes an NYC loft style (bricks, open spaces) with a nightclub vibe, making it a festive place where the kitchen serves hearty Greek specialties beneath an ambiance of flashing lights, sirens and house music pumped so loudly that you will have trouble making conversation with your guests.

If that weren't enough, waiters here tend to stop service a few times an hour to jump up on tables and dance, or throw thousands of paper napkins in the air, or start random conga lines by taking patrons from their seats and adding to the line. Very festive, very loud -- a great place to go if you're with a group that doesn't want t speak a lot while you're there (like my visit here with my grumpy compadre Kip McGuire, as the picture below points out, was clearly more taken by the food than the company).

The food is very good, especially the fresh mezze and the delicious grilled items and seafood. Get the large scampi sauteed in butter, wine and tomatoes if it's on the menu, or the braised lamb shanks. Both are excellent and succulent (as Kip McGuire will surely tell you). Prices are a little on the high side, so keep that in mind while ordering around the menu.

The toilets, ironically enough, are just as boisterous as the dining room -- though, thankfully enough, you won't find waiters interrupting your visit to drag you into a conga line. (Phew.) However, this isn't a quiet spot to escape the hustle and bustle (not like the magical facilities as Wynn Las Vegas, for example). You will hear the house music playing quite prevalently here, and because of the restaurant's festive vibe and modus operandi (i.e. it pushes a lot of drinks upon the clientele) people use the toilets consistently here. So much so that I was only afforded one clean shot of the interior of the bathroom before being burst in upon by a string of frat boys needing to drain the main vein.

The environment itself is decent. Nice rusty beige tile on the floor, beige-colored drywall walls, some black highlights here and there, good lighting, and it was clean for the most part, save for the bits of mis-thrown paper and such. Nothing too terrible. But I do wish it were a little less hectic -- I imagine making a longer pit stop here would be very stressful, what with all the heavy bass beats and the people pounding away at you all the while.....

Marks out of 10:

7. Decent bathrooms, but like the bustling facilities at Soyka's in Miami, they offer little chance to relax and let your guard down, if you know what I mean.

Comments to the Management:

Is there any way to make the bathrooms feel more isolated? Or to turn the music down? I have a headache, just thinking about that pumping bass beat.....

Sleuth's Main Lobby Toilets Definitely a Step Up from Theater Facilities

Sleuths Mystery Dinner Show
8267 International Drive
Orlando, FL USA 32819
www.sleuths.com

Where is it?

These toilets are located in the gift shop area of this dinner theater attraction. To get to them, enter the gift shop/bar area and mosey your way to the back of the place. Follow the bar, keeping it on your left, until you see a hallway in the back baring signs for the bathrooms.

Note: You'll find many silly gifts and gag items along the way. Try not to get distracted, especially if you're in dire need to go. Otherwise, the joke will be on you (get it?).

What's it like?

Unlike the toilets in the actual dinner theaters here, which are small and often water-soaked (especially by the end of a performance), these facilities are spacious, clean and comfortable -- and they proved reminiscent of the facilities I experienced at the Big Boy diner in Altamonte Springs, albeit this one has black tile highlights and that one has red. Go figure.

Visitors here can expect to find white tile on the floor and walls (the latter features those black highlights), a black marble counter top with metallic sink and glossy mirrored vanity, white urinals and toilets and black stalls. Not bad at all -- and as I said, a complete 180-degree turn from what you'll find inside the actual dinner theater toilets, which (as I said already) aren't all that nice to begin with. (You'd expect the opposite, since the dinner theater units get more traffic, but that isn't the case.) And though the environment is a bit sterile and cold, it's still a welcome change from what you'll find in those theater rooms. Ick.

Best still: My visit occurred after the show, so it was private, clean and comfortable (it was nearly midnight, so I imagine the cleaning crew had already made a pass). Only my friend Kip McGuire, who attended the show with me (along with some of our other friends -- it was a mutual friend's birthday party) barged in while I was there -- which ultimately made for an amusing, somewhat foul-mouthed photo opp. Ha ha ha!

Marks out of 10:

8. Should be a 7, but it was such a refreshing and welcome change of pace from the toilets in the dining room theater that I had to increase the score a little.

Comments to the Management:

Thank you for allowing me to step into a clean bathroom after such a dreary show and meal...... It was the best part of the evening, actually.

In the Right Light, Texas de Brazil Toilet Feels Much Like the Most Elegant Medieval Prison on Earth

Texas De Brazil
5259 International Dr
Orlando, FL USA
www.texasdebrazil.com

Where is it?

From the front entrance, face the large hostess stand that looks more like an elongated cashier counter than a hostess stand. Behind the hostess stand, you'll see a divider wall, which separates the small lobby from the salad bar area behind it.

Follow the divider wall to the right and you'll see a hallway opening across from the right edge of the wall. The bathrooms are down that hallway, which is covered with newspaper and magazine clippings showering the establishment with praise.

What's it like?

This meat-lover's haven is one of Orlando's more indulgent and elegant eateries. Essentially an all-you-can-eat meat and salad place, it models itself off the churrascarias of Brazil: The menu consists of 14 to 17 grilled cuts of meats, chicken or pork, each prepared method over an open flame and carved tableside by the restaurant’s authentically costumed Gauchos. The meats are salty and tender and full of flavor, making the location a must for anyone who loves beef as a whole.

Also worth noting is the place's enormous (more than 40 items) salad bar, which includes everything from imported cheeses to salamis to freshly made noodles to soups -- in addition to the multitude of greens available!

Though on the surface it sounds like a better-than-average buffet, in actuality it's a fine dining restaurant of the highest caliber. The ingredients are fresh and expertly prepared (especially on the salad bar, which is easily the best of its kind in the city), service is outstanding, the wine list is impeccable and the desserts are fantastic.

Of course, it's also somewhat expensive (expect to drop $150 for two here) and it's unfathomly filling -- just look at the face of my friend Kip McGuire in the picture to the right for proof. The man looks ready to explode from eating too much meat! (That's essentially how you'll feel after leaving this place.)

Given that setup, you expect the bathroom to be somewhat horrendous. Bathrooms at all-you-can-eat places tend to be locations where people make room -- one way or another -- for more food, or for the chance to make their pants fit more comfortably, so they aren't always the prettiest places (as indicated by, say, the toilet experienced at Super Orient Buffet in Orlando).

But now and then we come across a fine buffet bathroom (the one at Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons in Savannah, GA comes to mind) and this one is another. Essentially a small, long place, it's filled with several modern touches that life it above the ranks of run-of-the-mill toilet. A bit over-crammed with design touches, it's still a top-notched rest stop and definitely a comforting destination after you've filled yourself with 50 lbs. of meat.

The floor here is covered with off-white rough-textured (as opposed to smooth and sheer), and the walls are covered in a dusty, sandstone like tile. The lighting is dim but elegant (better than what we found at, say, Soyka's in Miami, which was a bit too dim).

The sink bowls are made of heavy granite, and there are two of them, each sitting like statues into a little cutaway in the front of the bathroom. A nice touch.

The sink station also has two waste baskets, one to each side of each sink bowl -- a smart inclusion that eliminates that awkward moment where two people find themselves trying to throw paper towels away at the same time.

Also, there is some rust-colored steel soap dispensers above each station, on a nifty little jetty shelf that sticks out just below the mirror on the wall above, as well as two wicker baskets holding some "seriously thick hand towels," as my friend Jason Wilson remarked.

The urinals and toilet are the standard white porcelain variety but are clean and in perfect working order. The urinals are separated by a dividing wall of those dusty sandstone-like tiles, as are the two commode stalls.

The doors to the toilets look like they're made of wrought iron and both latch closed with one of those primitive latches that one sees in those old movies where people are locked in a dungeon. And ironically, the effect inside the stall is similar to the experience of being in one of those dungeons, or in this case I am thinking more of a cell on a Spanish galleon, given the modernist Latin flair found in the design of the restaurant itself . You close the door behind you and the hinges creek like a piece of antiquity, and you lock the thing and the lock shudders and the echo of the locking sound resonates throughout the bathroom. And the latch itself is even rusty! Very prison-like, if you think about it.

Worse still was the bit of graffiti I found inside the bathroom wall, reading "Life." Indeed, very prison-like. Then again, if you're there for a longer visit, perhaps the illusion of "life" allows for a more contemplative or redemptive experience?

Marks out of 10:

8. Elegant, stylish, old-fashioned -- if only the stalls didn't have that prison-like feel to them.

Comments to the Management:

I think it's time to oil the hinges on the bathroom stall doors. Otherwise, great place.