Cafe Society: Flushed with success

When restaurateur Oliver Peyton (Atlantic Bar & Grill, Coast etc) opened his latest venture a few weeks ago, it wasn't the food that everyone was talking about... it was the toilets!

At Mash in Great Portland Street, just north of Soho, the gents' urinals are made of concave mirrors designed to exaggerate what's reflected in them and, in the ladies', there are small TV screens that transmit live pictures of what's going on in the gents - although only in the sink area.

"We want people to have fun in our restaurant and that extends to the toilets too," explains a spokeswoman. And they are not the only ones. What the toilets look like - and what you can do in them - has become such a big part of bar and restaurant design that, earlier this year, the style magazine Elle Decoration devoted pages to the no-longer-quite- so humble toilet.