What Not to Name Your Restaurant in 2013
Back in August, my pal Allan Katz over at Cana Rum Bar and I came up with a list of names not to name your restaurant and/or bar in 2013. This post is partially inspired by Hedonia’s What Not to Name Your Food Blog.
- Kitchen
- The address of the restaurant (not the numbers, not the street name)
- Anything animal-related (unless the boys at Surly Goat and Blind Donkey will really name a bar called The Minty Fox, heh)
- Table
- Door
- Farm
- Shop (or the hated ‘shoppe’)
- any form of lighting (chandelier, lantern, Edison etc)
- Rum
- Bar (do you see what Allan and I did here?)
- Market
- Spice
- Tavern
- Laurel (see note on address)
- Grill (especially w/an e as in ‘grille’)
- City
- House (no spelling in foreign languages either like ‘casa’ or god forbid the old-fashioned ‘chez’)
- Corner
- AND (don’t put two random words together and join them with AND for the name of your restaurant)
- Red (actually any primary color)
- Sky
- Union
- Food
- Drink
- Town (see note on adding extraneous Es to words as in Towne)
- Pub
Runner up names as suggested by Minty minions
- Bistro
- Social (especially when combined with other no-no words– see above)
We will sigh and go to the current restaurants with these words in their name but don’t think you’re off the hook. You better be the best damn Red AND Bear Kitchen Sky Spice Farm Corner Social House Table Bar Kitchen Pub Shoppe Tavern ever. We mean it.
© The Minty 2012
Excellent. For the Bay Area crowd, I would add: Bar, Local (or any loca- derivative), and Plate.
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Oh! Local and Plate are definitely out!
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Brilliant. You forgot “Co.”
Maybe someone should take over an old pub and name it ‘The Douche and Bags”
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I haven’t seen that so much lately but yes, no more “Co.” Ha, The Douche and Bags…with second restaurant called the Douche Baguette.
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Good list. I knew you would get on the address thing!
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Oh a side note, if you’re going to name your restaurant after a place like the Vegas Buffet in Glendale, it’s going to be hard to google!
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Like! Someone here in PDX mentioned the other day that Market had closed. I was like, “Huh? Which market?”
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Ha, no kidding! This is a typical conversation I’ve had- “Have you gone to Tavern?” “Which Tavern? Laurel Tavern? Westside Tavern?” “No, THE Tavern. Not-anything-tavern-Tavern.” Oh.
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The Minty Fox certainly does sound like it should be a real place. 🙂
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I think I might name that my Dating in LA blog. 🙂
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YES!
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Have to add “Eat” which is the name of a new restaurant in the Bay Area. I believe it’s eventually going to add a lounge and be called “Eat + Lounge,” but that’s not much better.
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Such a fun post!
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