What really happened at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen on Valentine’s Day

What really happened at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen on Valentine’s Day

So exactly what (or who) went down over the Valentine’s Day weekend at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen after last week’s media storm over the bathroom sex promotion? “I really wouldn’t know, since our bathrooms are unisex. I’m sure it did happen, though,” says owner Donna Dooher. “We think a couple of people just went in and came back out for a giggle.”

It’s a little anti-climatic, since news outlets from Romania, Portugal, France, Hong Kong, Italy and the States—including the Huffington Post, Drudge Report and the Village Voice—made it sound like the restaurant was holding an orgy in the dining room.

Instead, Dooher says there was a lot of pointing and staring at the washrooms, and she was happy that customers took it as the joke it was intended to be. And no, there weren’t any reporters hiding in the corner tallying the bathroom trysts. Staff did, however, sell T-shirts that read “Our big love event came to a happy ending” to commemorate the occasion, with proceeds going to the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research.

“We had three wonderful days of celebrations, and I’m so glad the whole world is interested in love and peace instead of war,” says Dooher with a laugh. “We were always spinning it that way. I have to say we did stir up a lot of mud. A lot of people seemed very concerned and outraged, but once the dust settled, Toronto’s wonderful sense of humour prevailed. We weren’t looking to offend people or make them uncomfortable.”

Both the police and the health department were called in after the press wrote about sanitation issues. Dooher shrugs it off but laments that a cheeky joke became a dirty limerick. “I don’t know what we’re going to do next Valentine’s, but we have an entire year to plan it.”