The New Red Hook Lobster Pound Has the Best Bathroom in Brooklyn
The new Red Hook Lobster Pound
photo via Instagram
There’s a lot to love about the newly revamped Red Hook Lobster Pound: a full wine, beer and liquor license, allowing for blueberry soda and vodka-based cocktails; a comprehensive menu featuring raw oysters and funnel cakes, delivered table-side by a sizable team of servers, eliminating the need the trundle outside with trays between the tiny pickup counter and the previously bare-bones sit-down area; and a significantly expanded space, which will easily accommodate those summertime hordes, eager to orchestrate a Brooklyn staycation by way of Maine. And then there are the bathrooms.
It’s not often that water closets warrant much of a mention, save for the eco-friendly lavatory at Habana Outpost, the high-tech toilet and Star of David soap at Shalom Japan, and the decadent orgy wallpaper at Bed Stuy newcomer, L’Antagoniste. But at the Pound, staff are as quick to advocate a trip to the restroom as they are to suggest an order of cheese-gobbed lobster french fries, gesturing to a circular, floor-to-ceiling structure fashioned to look like a lighthouse.
Once you push back the sliding, white-washed wooden doors, the jovial chatter of plastic-bibbed lobster pickers and Narragansett chuggers are effectively swept away, replaced by a relaxing rush of crashing waves and the throaty trill of seagulls. A 360-degree wall of mirrors don’t reflect as much as they distort, funhouse-style, furthering the illusion of being magically transported to a grey-skied, sand-swept island, far away from the urban sprawl of Red Hook. And a domed, umbrella-strung ceiling completes the unexpectedly picturesque panorama, along with a trio of mismatched plastic beach chairs, for when bathroom-going becomes a group effort.
So by all means, enjoy the extensive selection of wine, beer and cocktails at the gussied-up Red Hook Lobster Pound, and bring a few friends, why don’t you. Because in addition to asserting itself as the ideal Brooklyn escape come summer, it might just walk away with the coveted, annual award for having the Best Restroom in America.
284 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook
