Service that brings on the smiles

Pads in restaurant bathroom, bespoke scents as parting gift and seats for your bag - these are among the winning ways restaurants are showing their thoughtfulness towards diners

- Cherie Lok

Even by the standards of Tanjong Pagar's cosmopolitan crowd, there are a number of things about Nitty Gritty that might seem unusual.

The hand-crocheted bag charms, for example, made by co-founder Wanyu Bradley's mother and sold near the entrance of the Teo Hong Road restaurant, which serves grits made of corn. The menu especially what, the average Singaporean diner might reasonably wonder, are grits?

Even the toilet. It is unusually well-stocked, with lens and stain removing wipes. There is also a dedicated cabinet marked “for the ladies”, to be opened “in case of emergencies” - the kind all women are only too familiar with.

Should such an emergency strike, Nitty Gritty has you covered. Grab a liner, pad or tampon, freshen up with some dry shampoo (stored in the same cabinet) and heave a sigh of relief.

Mrs Bradley, 38, got the idea for her own restaurant after coming across such provisions in a bathroom in a co-working space overseas. To her, it immediately made sense.

“We've all been there," says the former marketeer, who is married to Nitty Gritty's head chef Matthew Bradley. Their restaurant opened in January. “I’m very ill-equipped. There are times when I forget to take along a pad and don’t have coins for the pad dispenser either.”

Though pads are still far from a hospitality staple, they are becoming less of an anomaly in restaurants these days.

Other establishments, like Australian-Italian restaurant Cenzo, cocktail bar The Elephant Room, and rooftop restaurant and bar Ce La Vi, view them as a worthwhile investment too.