Monday, October 20, 2008
Restaurants Our American Restaurant
Posted by Nicki Wood on Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 5:00 AM
Weeks ago, Carrington and I visited two restaurants with virtually the same name in one day. We discussed the limited pool of ethnic restaurant names in this country. Chinese restaurants: Peking, Dragon, Golden, China, Garden—pick any two words and put them together. Middle Eastern restaurants: gyros kebab. (It's actually a law, I think, that they must be named gyros kebab.) Indian restaurants: [Evocative Indian City Name] Palace, [Evocative Indian City Name] Garden, or just [Evocative Indian City Name].
It surely must be difficult to capture the majesty of a place, a culture and a cuisine in a restaurant name, especially in a second language. What about us—can we do it in English? If you owned an American restaurant elsewhere—say, Copenhagen or Sydney—what would you call it? And what would you serve?
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Joe's Diner
I'd have the local version of our italian menus with the obligatory hamburger and fries for the not so daring, but the regular menu would be basic American greasy spoon done fresh. 24 hours, breakfast all day, full bar. And my smoker in the back for brisket and boston butt.
