Restaurant Bathroom Report: Dinosaur BBQ
99 Court Street, Rochester, NY 14604
Web: Restaurant Bathroom Report: Dinosaur BBQ
Phone: 585.325.7090
See More Restaurant Reviews For:
Barbecue Bathrooms NYC Rochester Syracuse

"Our hope is that some of the good and bad examples will inspire other local businesses to give more thought to these frequently used but often neglected rooms."

When we first started Buffalo Chow, we realized that there are two rooms in almost every restaurant that separate the women from the men, both literally and figuratively: the bathrooms. One of us - guess who - felt that the cleanliness and accommodations in the restrooms were a strong reflection on the restaurant as a whole, and that factors such as dirt, low supplies of soap or toilet paper, and the absence of a baby changing table were important, possibly even worth discussing in reviews. The other of us wasn't quite so sure. So over the past year, we've been sizing up the facilities at the restaurants we've covered, and we've decided that we're going to occasionally share some of the most noteworthy ones with you. For our inaugural edition, we selected a truly unique example, Rochester's Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, since it illustrates how first impressions may differ a little from the realities of these rooms.

If you're unfamiliar with Dinosaur or haven't read our review, know up front that this is one of the area's very best barbecue joints: its original location in Syracuse looked more like the tiny biker bar and BBQ place that it once was before becoming a bigger, popular restaurant, but its Rochester venue in the converted Lehigh Valley Railroad Station is nicer, cleaner, and more spacious. Except for the bathrooms. At the original Syracuse venue, graffiti was both encouraged and raunchy; in Rochester, both the men's and women's bathrooms are covered from ceiling to walls, windows, doors, and cabinets with scrawls, which like Dinosaur's menu are only occasionally off-color.

One surprise: the women's bathroom was every bit as covered in graffiti as the men's. Another: the Rochester Dinosaur facilities were otherwise clean, so even though everything might have looked crazy, the sinks, toilets, soap and towel dispensers were all kept free of marks, which is to say that the proprietors let patrons have fun with their markers - even encouraging them to do so - but otherwise treats them as sanitary, working bathrooms, so facade aside, cleanliness is still important. For that reason, and despite the not entirely shocking lack of family-friendliness - baby changing tables aren't anywhere to be found, and the use of language in some of the graffiti isn't exactly kid-appropriate - Dinosaur's bathrooms may look rough from the photos, but they're far from the worst we've seen in our travels.

Future Restaurant Bathroom Reports will take turns spotlighting noteworthy good, bad, and weird water closets that we've come across; our hope is that some of the good and bad examples will inspire other local businesses to give more thought to these frequently used but often neglected rooms. And of course, we're interested in your observations as well, so if you've seen any particularly amazing facilities around Western New York, let us know in the comments below.