Taqueria goes viral on TikTok for surprising ‘Millennial grey’ restroom

A Minneapolis taqueria experienced an unexpected brush with online fame after a regular customer’s video celebrating and gently mocking the restaurant’s “Millenial grey” bathroom went viral on TikTok.

In the video, TikTok user @chloeisag, whose real name is Chloe Guild, warns viewers, “Nothing can prepare you for what the bathroom looks like,” before entering Pineda Tacos Plus’s restroom.

Inside, the camera pans over the bathroom’s modern grey interior and wall art with an inspirational quote, as Ms Guild sings in autotune.

“There’s a Millennial gray looking restroom inside the Mexican restaurant,” she sings. “It’s giving sponsored by Hobby Lobby. It’s giving house flipping renovated kitchen looking. It’s giving airport. It’s giving Live Laugh Love. it’s giving corporate. It’s giving women’s conference. I’m not trying to hate. I’m trying to say, I didn’t expect a Mexican [restaurant] bathroom to look that way.”

The video has been viewed more than 3m times.

Luis Reyes Rojas, who has owned the business for nearly 10 years on Minneapolis’s Lake Street, said that he’s grateful, if slightly surprised, by the sudden attention.

“It’s free publicity, and thanks to God since that day that she came,” he told Sahan Journal. “Many Americans have come—even if it’s just to see the bathroom.”

The restaurateur explained that the bathroom has a unique origin. In 2020, a neighbouring business vacated their property amid the civil unrest and looting that followed the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. Mr Rojas expanded into that building and constructed a new bathroom with his wife, who has an interest in decor and took the lead on designing the bathrooms.

“My wife told me, ‘Give me a chance to build that bathroom how I want to’,” Mr Reyes added in Sahan Journal.

Millennial grey is a loosely defined term, describing a matte light grey look that has popped up often in minimalist Airbnbs, IKEA furniture, recently renovated homes, and other products and spaces marketed towards Millenials.

On TikTok, videos describing the aethestic tagged under the topic “Millenial grey core” have nearly 3bn combined views.

Notably, social media commentary about the look tends to have a negative slant.

“Every time original hardwood floors are replaced by gray plank vinyl a year is taken from my life,” one Twitter user wrote, showing a side-by-side of a hardwood floor gone Millenial grey.

Some have even argued that Millenial grey is a defining colour for this generation, representative of the homogenising aesthetics of globalism, online retail, and banal direct-to-consumer brands.

“If The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit once offered a warning about conformity, he is now an inspiration, although the outfit has gotten an upgrade,” the editors of the n+1 literary magazine recently wrote in an article titled, “Why Is Everything So Ugly?”

“Today he is The Man in the Gray Bonobos, or The Man in theGray Buck Mason Crew Neck, or The Man in the Gray Mack Weldon Sweatpants — all delivered via gray Amazon van,” they continued. “The imagined color of life under communism, gray has revealed itself to be the actual hue of globalized capital.”