27 Really Terrible Boston Restaurant Names

Choosing a restaurant name has to be one of the most difficult and significant decisions a new restaurateur has to make. A lot is riding on it: the name represents the only opportunity many potential customers ever get to decide if the restaurant appeals to them in terms of its concept, atmosphere, price, and the other intangible qualities it may connote. So I'm always amazed when a restaurant chooses a really terrible name.

I'm not just talking about the widespread misapplication of bistro and trattoria, though that annoys the deuce out of me. Properly used, those terms denote rather specific forms of relatively humble restaurants in France and Italy, but in the USA, they're abused to mean practically anything. In Boston, they mostly get slapped on places that are too fancy and expensive to fit the traditional usage, and the offenders on that score are too numerous to mention. Rather, I'm here to cite the garden-variety-stupid, the what-the-hell-were-you-thinking, the where-were-your-friends-when-you-picked-that kind of restaurant naming awfulness.

So, herewith are a few notably bad Boston restaurant names from my personal Hall of Shame:

• Mooo... -- A romantic luxury steakhouse making a cutesy, lame joke at cows' expense? And WTF kind of omission does that ellipsis represent? Maybe, "Mooo..., despite the tee-hee name, is located in XV Beacon, a $500-a-night Beacon Hill boutique hotel, and is every bit as costly and pretentious as you therefore might expect.”

• Prose -- Actually a pretty good chef-owned small restaurant in Arlington, but the name leads you to expect the prosaic, not the lyrical, on the plate. This bit of self-sabotage is matched only by the chef's famously grumpy attitude toward customers.

• Blunch -- A terrific little South End breakfast/lunch place that sounds uncomfortably close to onomatopoeia for vomiting.

• KO Prime -- Winner for Most Ironic Name, as this expensive Downtown hotel steakhouse does not serve prime-grade beef, but the same choice-grade meat you can buy plastic-wrapped in Styrofoam trays at Johnnie's Foodmaster.

• BOKX 109 -- "I know, honey, let's go to that cheesy 'Vegas-style steakhouse' in Newton named after a slaughterhouse term for a carcass container." “Oooh, yum-o!”

• No Name -- The retirees on cut-rate package tours dining by the busload at this Waterfront tourist trap of a shore-food joint probably don't appreciate the dull irony of this moniker.

• Basta Pasta – You'd think a pasta specialist would want to signal its abundant portions. "Nope! We're just Enough Pasta!”

• Big Papi's Grille –Red Sox slugger David Ortiz is one of the most lovable sports personalities in Boston history, in no small part thanks to his epic contributions to ending the local nine's 86-year championship drought. But I think it was a mistake to telegraph his involvement in this place, as anyone with a lick of dining-out experience knows that restaurants owned by athletes usually underwhelm. Predictably, the reviews have been mediocre.

• Strip-T's – It's hard to bust on a modest indie restaurant in Watertown, the kind of place that serves good American food with nothing over $15, but that name makes me gnash my teeth. Nobody equates hoochie dancing with fine dining.

• Chung King Rick's Cafe -- A pitiable Billerica brown-sauce American-Chinese restaurant/townie bar, filled with customers who seem equally desperate for and hopeless of escape. "Of all the greasy-eggroll joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

• Boloco – This small local burrito chain didn't bother me until a fellow Chowhound pointed out that the name can be read as “bollock-o”. I'll wager that, despite the current rage in Boston for offal, the owners weren't trying to evoke the image of bull testicles. (The true etymology isn't much more appealing, an abbreviation of “Boston Local Company.” Bleh.)

• uBurger – Actually a not-bad pun in the making (the German “über”, indicating superiority, crossed with “burger”), but nobody pronounces it as anything but “you-burger”.

• Violators of my “dubious possessives in restaurant names” bugbear -- I documented this nagging peeve of mine on my blog entry, "But There Is No Mr. L'Espalier!". To quote that essay: “Is there really a Mr. Soya at Soya’s? Does a Ms. Zebra sit on the board of Zebra’s Bistro? I’d love to believe there’s a Pepper Sky running Pepper Sky’s Thai Sensation – she sounds like the star of a 1960s TV show about a secret agent who favors Mod fashions – but I suspect the truth is duller.” Add Harvard Square Spanish/South American/Central American whatsis Conga's to this shamefully growing list.

• Island Hopper – A pretty passable Back Bay restaurant with a fun pan-Asian menu, but I wonder whether its Indonesian owner is aware of the usage of "hopper" in some quarters as slang for “toilet”.

• Mamagoo's – Why call out a humble Fresh Pond sub shop? Because it used to be called “Mr. Magoo's”, presumably until it got a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers at Columbia Pictures, which owns the old cartoon character. Change one letter, drop a period, and voila! You're no longer violating copyright law -- now you're “Mamagoo”. Um, ew.

• Smoken' Joe's – I haven't tried this Brighton barbecue joint yet, but I cringe at that misbegotten spelling. I have to assume that “Smokin'” was taken, but that alternative looks dumber than Snooki.

• Stork Club – I imagine this South End spot would like to attract the same multi-racial clientele that flocked to its predecessor, Bob's Southern Bistro. Guess it overlooked the fact that the original Stork Club, one of New York's most famous cafe-society nightclubs, was notoriously inhospitable to African-American celebrities. Oops. (Tip of the hat to esteemed fellow Boston Phoenix restaurant critic Robert Nadeau for spotting this unfortunate irony.)

• Thaitation – A fine little Thai storefront in the Fenway with a nearly nonsensical tongue-twister of a name. What does the “-tation” stand for? Citation? (Might make sense, given the nearby parking situation.) Mutation? (Not so appetizing.) A play on “titration”? (Ugh: not a chem lab term!) Puzzling.

• Pu Pu Hot Pot – A serviceable, very reasonably priced American-Chinese place in Central Square, but honestly, do we need to give twelve-year-olds another reason to snigger?

In the Stupid and Bygone category:

• T.J. Scallywaggle's -- Winner, Cognitive Dissonance Division. Sounded like the kind of hideous chain restaurant that serves Steak Quesadilla Towers and Shrimp Poppers, was actually a vegan pizzeria. Its also-a-vegan-pizzeria successor Peace o' Pie may have a groaner of a pun for a name, but at least it's consistent with the presumed leftie-activist sensibilities of its owners and customers.

• Apocrypha – As the name suggests, this extremely precious Needham restaurant has since been expunged from the canon of still-operating establishments.

• INQ -- An awful Newbury Street restaurant with an equally-awful name, though not as gobsmackingly imbecilic as its successor, Luigi and Roscoe's @ INQ (also mercifully closed.) The legacy of naming inanity in this location continues to this day with Cafeteria, which reflects the owners' mistaken impression that putting air quotes around the name of a would-be chic hangout serving $12 Pineapple Cosmos is ever-so-fascinatingly droll.

In the Not As Dumb As It Sounds category:

• Moby Dick – I'd originally guessed that this Persian kabob joint near Symphony Hall was a seafood place in its prior incarnation, and the owners simply were too cheap to get a new sign. Wrong: it turns out there's a famous restaurant in Tehran by this name, which also inspired the popular DC-area Moby Dick House of Kabobs chain.

• Bull McCabe's -- The name of this sweet little Irish pub in Union Square (Somerville) sounded to me like the kind of casual-dining hellhole that Anthony Bourdain would call "TGI McFunster's". This just proves I'm not so well-read: in fact, it refers to the protagonist of beloved Irish author John B. Keane's play The Field.

• Lord Hobo -- Several friends urged me to flay the name of this Cambridge beer-geek bar for verging on mocking the homeless, but I consider it a different animal. To me, it evokes a quaint, possibly rural British pub, echoing an ancient English tradition of consciously quirky public-house names. Further, I admire its marketing effectiveness: the name alone has engendered a lot of discussion, which I'll speculate was partly the owner's intent. In other words, deliberately vs. unintentionally unseemly is a non-trivial distinction.

At least Bostonians can take solace in the fact that, despite the howlers I've cited here, we have nothing as patently, crudely nudge-nudge-haw-haw as Crabby Dick's (a Delaware seafood shack), Phat Phuc Noodle Bar (a London Vietnamese restaurant which I'm certain was not named to honor its literal translation, “Happy Buddha”), or The Money Shot (a Chicago comfort food joint). As for my not making any more cheap jokes here, you're welcome.

There’s a riot going on in the cocktail world

John Gertsen, Misty Kalkofen, and Jackson Cannon getting down.
Photo courtesy of Jackson Cannon

There’s a renaissance in bartending going on right now, and it’s the most exciting thing to happen to sophisticated drinkers in decades. As a sometime bartender and longtime cocktail nerd, I witnessed the beginnings of this movement in Boston with the 1998 opening of The B-Side Lounge in Cambridge, a venue that pioneered a kind of scholarly, high-craft mixology I'd never seen before. I’ve been gratified to see its influence expand, but for some reason, not everyone has followed along.

Consider the estimable Robert Nadeau, the lead restaurant critic at the Boston Phoenix for over 25 years. In my view, he's the best food writer in town, an éminence grise with nonpareil range, that rare character who can write authoritatively and evocatively about everything from fine dining to authentic Chinatown holes-in-the-wall, and wine and beer, too. But at dinner the other night, when I started gushing about the recent uptick in local craft bartending, Nadeau admitted this wasn't an area he'd been following closely; he'd thought that Boston bartending was still stuck in a pink-tinged, icky-sweet vodka cocktail moment.

I happily demurred on this point, convincing Nadeau to let me drag him to a nearby craft-cocktail bar, where over a couple of beautifully made drinks originally conceived during the late-19th century Golden Age -- a period when America's best bartenders garnered the same devotion and fame that our current Food Network celebrity chefs do -- I continued to sing the virtues of Boston’s cocktail revival. I'm pretty sure he caught some of my excitement, that sense of a wild frontier worth exploring. But afterward I thought, “Nobody's more plugged into Boston’s restaurant scene than Nadeau; if he's a half-step behind me on this craft cocktail thing, then the typical bar patron must have no idea.” So I decided to offer a few tips here for curious beginners on how best to enjoy what's happening at the leading edge of Boston bartending:

• Forget “Sex and the City”. Nadeau’s take isn’t entirely unfounded: many Boston bars are still hawking specialty cocktails built on flavored vodkas, sweet liqueurs, and cream-based cordials. The sloppily-made Cosmopolitan is emblematic: sugary, pretty, potent, and profitable. These are aimed at novices, often younger drinkers who want sweetness to mask the taste of alcohol. The cool triangular glass may make the imbiber feel sophisticated, but its contents shouldn’t: a key hallmark of serious cocktails is balance -- an interplay of sweet, sour, bitter, and/or savory flavors in which no single element dominates. If you’ve ever looked at those candy-colored and –flavored drinks with disdain, or found them cloying after one or two, you’re a good candidate for the genuine old-school article.

• Expect a different kind of bartender. The pros behind the stick at craft cocktail bars are a new breed: serious and formidable, a combination of fine-dining chef, lab chemist, and history geek. They go to extreme lengths to source high-quality ingredients from all over the world, uncovering exciting and original spirits, fortified and aromatized wines, exotic liqueurs and cordials, and aromatic bitters. They use fresh fruits, fresh-squeezed juices, fresh herbs. They make their own syrups, infusions, bitters, and cocktail cherries. They assemble drinks with great precision, measuring everything. They worry about the proper manufacture, shape, and size of ice for each drink, and fret over the right serving glass. They study cocktail history, collect vintage bartending guides and barware, learn the origin stories and recipes of hundreds of classic drinks, labor to create new ones that respect the history of the craft. And they take hospitality seriously, recognizing that the ability to make a superb drink means nothing if the customer doesn’t feel welcome, valued, well cared for.

• Be assured that there’s a craft cocktail for every taste. While it might seem abstruse at first, this game is like bocce: you can have no idea what you’re doing the first time you play and still have a blast, but it gets richer and more interesting the deeper you get into it. The quickest entrée? Visit a craft cocktail bar at a time when it isn’t particularly busy, when you can have a leisurely discussion with a bartender about your likes and dislikes. These folks will find ways to gently ease you out of your well-worn rut to explore new alleys. Maybe a Manhattan variant will hook you, or a recreation of an authentic Tiki drink, or a long drink based on some obscure Italian amaro -- maybe even a carefully-conceived Boilermaker. It’s a strange new world, but the right guide can swiftly open it up for you. Don't be surprised if they try to wean you from vodka, which most craft bartenders consider too featureless a spirit, too blank a canvas, to merit inclusion in interesting cocktails.

• Understand that the scene is nascent and dynamic. The bygone B-Side fired the opening salvo in the battle to bring back 19th-century verve, skill, and sophistication to cocktail making. Talent honed there fanned out to places like Green Street, the bar at No. 9 Park, and Eastern Standard Kitchen. Subsequent waves kept rippling outward, with Golden Age inspired programs emerging at Deep Ellum, Drink (perhaps Boston's foremost incarnation of the revival), Hungry Mother, Craigie on Main, and others. Now the friendly local competition, level of serious training, growing enthusiasm and awareness among consumers, and greater availability of interesting spirits and bitters are all combining to help the scene rapidly evolve and grow. It’s like the drinking equivalent of the advent of Dada or the Lost Generation: tremendous artistic ferment and technical accomplishment effected by idiosyncratic and unique characters -- a fascinating scene.

• Look to the Internets for help. If we’re at the dawn of a boozy Nouvelle Vague, our Cahiers du cinéma is drinkboston.com, Lauren Clark’s acclaimed blog that limns the Boston cocktail landscape (and to which I occasionally contribute). This is a swell starting point, a way to get to know the key venues, star players, events, and recipes before you venture out. (It's also great fun; don't miss the hilarious comments from local bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts.) LUPEC Boston's website is full of edifying entries by members of a local classic-cocktail appreciation society comprised of lady bartenders and other women connected to the scene; it regularly sponsors terrific craft cocktail events. Cocktail Virgin Slut is another eye-opening read, a log of craft drinks sampled all over Greater Boston by four local cocktail mavens, with recipes and photos.

Like jazz music and basketball, the cocktail is a thoroughly, proudly American invention, one with a tradition that dates back 150 years. Prohibition gave it a sucker punch that has taken nearly 70 years to recover from, but it is bouncing back with a vengeance. This is not your auntie’s Raspberry Mojito – it’s more like your great-great-grandfather’s Martinez Cocktail (the historical predecessor to the Martini, made with Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, and orange bitters, a drink you might love even if you profess to dislike gin.) Now just might be a great time to sneak a sip for yourself.