So onto the bathroom…to be honest, I expected something as grandiose as the restaurant. I was sorely disappointed! The bathroom was clean, but super-boring. They had an ad in there for Sam’s Hof Brau free Wi-Fi (which is pretty cool). That and the door were it. Bathroom was pretty standard, light colors with white tile; looked like it had seen better times. Sadly the economy isn’t booming right now, because I think a bathroom overhaul, getting it closer to the restaurant itself, would be great. However…Sam’s prides itself on providing good food at a relatively low cost…and the bathroom is very much what you might expect an older restaurant to be, where they don’t put a lot of emphasis on bathroom design. Finally, taking into account that a great deal of the patrons are senior citizens (at least when I went that seemed to be the case), it’s likely they’re far more comfortable in a “normal” bathroom…and at the end of the day, making sure the clientele is happy is what matters most! Three rolls for an average bathroom.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Overall, the bathroom was kept clean. This is pretty impressive considering how busy Cabos is, especially on Cinco de Mayo. Longtime readers know how much I value a good clean bathroom. That having been said, I wasn’t overly excited about the trash can overflowing in pictures 4 and 5…yes I know they were busy…but when you run a popular establishment, you already know it’s going to be busy. Every year for the last three years the line is out the door on May 5…there’s no reason to not take an extra couple minutes and go check to make sure the sinks are dry and the trash can not overflowing. They managed to keep the bathroom clean overall but it seems like this was an oversight…and while not as bad as a filthy toliet or dirty stall, it looks careless. I’ll give this one three-and-a-half rolls, it’s colorful and clean, and I’m going to deduct a quarter of a roll for the overflowing trash can.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

The bathroom is pretty nice, I’m sorry I don’t have more pictures (I can’t believe I forgot my feet picture), but it’s a one-person bathroom and there was a line outside the door…and I don’t want to inconvenience anyone having to use the bathroom (I don’t appreciate it much). I kinda tripped out over the chalkboard, I’m not really sure why it’s there, but if I had more time (and some chalk), I would have at least put BathroomGoodies.com on it. I’ll have to do that next time, and I’ll grab some more photos (including a feet shot!) next time I’m there. Three rolls for an average clean bathroom, plus half a roll for the chalkboard (man I wish I’d had some chalk!)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The restaurant itself is pretty cool, with high vaulted ceilings and a warm cozy feel. If you’d never been in a French restaurant before, and your whole idea of the French is based on stereotypes (sorry people, stereotypes are still alive and well), you wouldn’t expect the restaurant to be at all like it is. Should you go, don’t feel that you have to dress to the nines, there were people in there dressed in football jerseys and flip flops (mostly us—but in all seriousness, it’s laid-back enough that no one stresses it much…and  the staff is welcoming either way).

Onto the bathroom…it’s dark and very relaxing. It’s nicely appointed, with dark tiles, dark wood around the mirrors, and a very cool wave sink. I think between Mercedes-Benz of Rocklin and La Provence, I’m gonna have to redo the sinks in my house. When I get the cajonés to do it, I’ll take pictures and put em up. Aw come on, who am I kidding…I couldn’t put in sinks to save my life! So I have to give this one four out of five rolls…it would get three-and-a-half for being an above-average bathroom and being clean, but I have to give half a roll for just that sink.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The bathroom was pretty standard, clean, mostly white, with a touch of red and green (kinda like the Italian flag, leading me to believe the color selection was specifically for that). The Dancing Tomato in picture #4 has horns and a hat (he’s a beefsteak tomato, of course), is on the door into the bathroom (designating “men’s”), and is just one of probably a half-dozen or so Dancing Tomatoes throughout the restaurant. Three rolls for the bathroom plus one-half for the beefsteak tomato.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Onto the bathroom…when you enter, you get to see what their current “special” is…in this case, ice-cold Tecate for $2.50. I’m not sure whether that’s good or not since I don’t really drink beer (that sound you hear is the collective gasp of beer drinkers around the world, shocked that your humble host almost never drinks beer). Above the urinal is another sign, which you probably can’t make out because it’s so blurry (I’d like to blame beer or it’s distant cousin, tequila, was at fault, but sadly, it wasn’t…the picture just came out bad…probably gotta blame the user on this one). They had a couple of glass lizards attached to the wall as a nice touch, and the handwash is an inside joke for those who know me. For their clean mostly generic bathroom I’ll give them three rolls, and add half a roll for the handwash. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

This has literally gotta be one of the coolest bathrooms I’ve ever been in. If it were in a Honda or VW or Ford or Kia or any other car dealer (despite Honda’s near-stellar reputation, I’m not a fan…I like Ford trucks, their now-defunct Excursion, and they did probably the best job of any company of renewing the retro side of the pony car-era with the new Mustang…VW owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Bugatti, so there’s some love there, and truthfully, although it took me a while, I like the New Beetle…I still wish it were a rear-engine configuration, but oh well)…I would feel exactly the same. No joke…this bathroom is cool! The first thing you notice when you walk in is the TV screens built into the mirror (see picture #5) and right above the urinal (see picture #1). I’m not sure if there are TV screens in the stalls, I didn’t check. Ironically, as you can see in pictures 4 and 5, the channel was on CNN, where James Lentz, President of Toyota USA, was discussing before a Senate panel the issues Toyota was having with sticking accelerators (some of those stories turned out to be fake). Finally, in pictures 6 and 7, you can see the sink they had in there. I tried to capture how the thing worked in picture #7, but it didn’t come out very well…anyway, there are no sinks per se. This is a solid slab of granite sloping toward the mirror, with a trough running behind it that collects the waste water and soap. The sink heads are automated and start when you put your hands under them (pretty standard).

For all the cool stuff in this bathroom, I’m giving it four-and-a-half rolls. “But, Bathroom Guy,” you might be asking yourself, “why only four-and-a-half? Why not five?” Let me tell ya, pardner! I’ve seen some amazing bathrooms on the web and in person (for some reason more when I was a kid than now…hmm). Although this bathroom is really cool, it can’t compare to the bathrooms in the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo for orginiality or design, and as I remember them, some of them are five-roll bathrooms).

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The bathroom was pretty impressive…it was painted two-tone aqua and white and nicely decorated! I’m not sure what the deal was with putting the toilet paper so high (see picture #2), but that was really the only complaint I had here.  The art was pretty cool, too. Overall, I’ll give ‘em three-and-a-half rolls for a great bathroom (they would have gotten four except for that toilet paper height…I fail to see the logic in design when everything else was so well done!) I thought the flowers and bow-and-arrow set with quiver was certainly interesting. Cupid anyone?

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The bathroom was not at all what I was expecting! Honestly, I was expecting dark and dingy…instead, it’s pink and white! The stalls are gray, and they have their upcoming events on the mirror. This is a clean bathroom and comes recommended (come for the bathroom, stay for the food!).

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Part of that kitschy thing…is the Pope Room, seating up to 15 people and the bust of a Pope (I believe it’s John Paul II…here’s a photo of the Pope Room, and I know the photographer credits this as John XXIII, so I may be wrong). The other really cool place to eat is the Kitchen Table (literally in the kitchen), where you can watch the food being made, dishes being cleaned, etc. The only down side is the kitchen room (not surprisingly) is the warmest area in the restaurant.

The bathroom is full of photographs (just like the rest of the restaurant), and even features a [locked] cabinet full of hair products. I thought it was pretty funny that the door to the bathroom stall has a painting of the volcano at Pompei erupting. Thanks to the creative bathroom design, Buca gets 4.5 rolls. Sometimes they even have a recording of women talking in the mens’ room (and I assume men talking in the womens’, but I don’t know) so it’s like you can hear the conversation in the other bathroom.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars