Taste Test

Recently eaten: rice and beans
Recent annoyance: dropping food on newly cleaned pants

As a lover of all things cheesy and pithy, I don't see what's wrong with these restaurant names.

What's in a name?
Restaurants are often given a bad name. Quite literally in the case of Marylebone's vegetarian Eat and Two Veg. With a name to make even a provincial barber groan, ETV (I refuse to type it again) rather undermines the meat-free diner's attempts at contemporary style. It would seem good food does not equal good taste.

Of course, it's not just vegetarians eateries but all specialist or niche restaurants which seem especially prone to the pun. Could you stomach the Mussel Inn, Thai'd Up or Mad Mex? And could a love affair with falafel survive a meal at Syriandipity?

Puns aren't the only sins when naming a restaurant. Writing in The Observer, Jay Rayner began a review, "Why didn't somebody stop them? Why didn't one of their investors, hearing the name for the first time, say, for God's sake no!" The offending outlet was named Ooze, an onomatopoeic evocation of seeping wounds, ordure and, apparently, risotto.

Personally, I take issue with Café Mao, a popular name for Chinese restaurants; something about dictators and good times doesn't seem to fit. Worse still was the restaurant which opened in Mumbai last year called Hitler's Cross, adorned with swastikas and images of the Führer. A cynical attempt at creating publicity with the weak defence from the proprietor that "Hitler is a catchy name".

For more innocent names to put you off your food, barbecue restaurants are hard to beat, providing horrors even vegans couldn't think of. Take your pick from Bubbalou's Bodacious Bar-B-Que, Hog's Breath Rest or Gassey Jack's Smokehouse Garage, names which make the nose wrinkle and the arteries clog just by reading them. It may go without saying that these, along with the Roadkill Café, are all to be found in America.

Our friends across the Atlantic do seem to admire the wordplay. One of America's biggest restaurant chains is Lettuce Entertain You, though sadly their memorably-monikered eateries Lawrence of Oregano and Jonathan Livingston Seafood are no more. Even staid old Washington DC isn't immune. Wonks can treat themselves at Grill from Ipanema, ThaiTanic, Papa Razzi or Rosemary's Thyme.

Such is the impact of pun-tastic restaurants in America that academia has weighed in. Lynn C. Hattendorf Westney, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois has collected "examples of international onomastic appellation which demonstrate that the names of contemporary dining and drinking establishments serve as semantic and/or humorous reflections of societal mores."

While her thoughts on Pulp Kitchen and Dine One One are intriguing, Westney neglects to cast her academic eye over this little beauty, tastingmenu.com's choice of "worst restaurant name ever".

We all have our own personal favourite best worst eatery names. Can anyone do better than these?