Saturday, September 11, 2010

Diasporic Dining XVII: The Bathroom at Lake Champlain Chocolates

Photography by Hallie Cohen

Everyone looks for something in a vacation, whether it is the still waters of a far off beach, verdant pine forests, lush gardens or the serenity that comes from hiking to great heights to escape the din of cosmopolitan life. But for those who seek nothing more than a good bathroom along the way, the shitter at the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory on Pine Street in Burlington, Vermont, with its anti-bacterial soap and its Kimberly-Clark sensor-equipped paper towel dispenser, should be the destination of choice. This bathroom, with cheery Vermont paintings on its tiled walls, is private and public at the same to time, and really lives up to the euphemism “restroom,” to the extent that it can only be used by one person at a time. It smells of a disinfectant more herbal and potent than what is used at some gyms. For exercise enthusiasts, this is a bathroom large enough to perform squat thrusts after you have indulged in the free chocolate samples inside the factory. Environmental matters are a popular cause in Vermont, where clean air is as important to the economy as oil is in Texas. The bathroom at Lake Champlain Chocolates is the equivalent of a gusher in Texas or a gold mine in Alaska. This is not a mere bathroom, but a clear statement that haste makes waste when it comes to taking a dump, and what makes the experience so satisfying is that it’s situated in an environment that’s totally consecrated to desserts. 



2 comments:

  1. Dear Francis,

    Undoubtedly the richness of Lake Champlain Chocolates'products rendered the bathroom an absolute necessity. & one visiting this comfort station is more likely to do pot-squats than squat-thrusts.

    At the risk of making too close an association between one end of the alimentary canal & the other, I'd recommend LCC's 5-Star Peanut Bar over most other confectioners' comparable products. It is delicious.

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  2. Aspiring hagiocrats eat LCC's like Popeye ate spinach. It's also good for the emotions, I hear. Nice to receive this message from you.

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