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Is there a rule stating that every restaurant must have a terrible website?
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You’re the best, KG! I feel that brunch is the most important meal of the day, so recommendations are always a good thing. Decor is kinda cute, but not irritatingly so. Plus, I may or may not have recently started a Great Chicago Brunch Crawl.
I can get behind your rant for sure. And, this has already been mentioned But, damn, that “Eat, Sleep, Whiskey” sign is trying way too hard to not be cute. It’s like the owners agree with you so much that they want to scream “WE ARE NOT CUTE. LOOK AT US NOT BEING CUTE. WE EVEN HAVE THIS SIGN!” I don’t mind it. It actually looks like a great place. Just funny, is all.
I was imagining you linking to something more like this:
Grey Lodge
But, maybe it is because I love that place and haven’t been for awhile. Although, on second glance, those chairs might be kind of cutesy. Oh well. Oh, also, it’s not really a place known for its food. It isn’t terrible, but no foodies are flocking there. Still, it’s the sort of place I was picturing as your delightful rant went on.
Is that your photobucket account? Or is there someone out there who shares your disdain for all things cute?
Are those wicker seats for actual sitting, or just decoration? Either way, no thanks, mr prasino. Even their website is “cute”.
ps:
Yes, all restaurants must have a terrible website. Preferably, using flash, poorly. It’s in the National Restaurant Association code.
I agree with the OP. (Although I also agree with the other posters who say the OP’s favorite place has a theme of its own.)
One of my favorite categories of restaurants is truckstops. They often serve good quality and reasonably priced food. And they avoid all cuteness (except sometimes they’ll have a cute waitress). Nobody is going to eat in a truckstop to impress anyone.
And here, from reading the OP’s description, I thought that she was referring to chains like TGI Fridays or Applebees with the old license plates and the like.
There’s an equally dispiriting trend here in the UK; traditionally, truck drivers, street cleaners, workmen and other rough types used to have their breakfast or lunch at something called a “greasy spoon”, where the food was basically eggs, bacon, chips, beans, pudding of colour, and in the post-war years Spam…
And, yeah, this has always bugged me. If you watch the sketch, the first two options that the dinner lady gives are “egg and bacon, egg sausage and bacon”. Neither of which have Spam. The customers could have just ordered them. I mean, there’s this rigmarole with the singers and the spam and spam and spam, but the very first two options didn’t have spam! Were the writers assuming that we’d forget them in the barrage of spam? Well, I didn’t forget. For twenty long years I’ve had that burning within me. Now it comes out and finally I can be a beautiful butterfly.
… and in the post-war years Spam. Greasy spoons were, in their day, the opposite of pretentiousness. There was no hidden motive behind the greasy spoon. It existed to sell cheap, calorific food. But because these restaurants became associated with rough and tough no-nonsense working men, they inevitably became fetishised by weakling new media professionals in the late 1990s early 2000s, and now they’re no longer the opposite of pretentiousness. If you open a greasy spoon in London nowadays, people assume that you’re targeting the graphic design / student market. Actual working men have their food at McDonalds instead. Or one of those fried chicken hole-in-the-wall places. Or they go to Starbucks, because if you’re working in London as a plumber nowadays you probably have a bit of spare cash.
So, yes, that’s gentrification for you. I admit that I generally avoided greasy spoons when they were actual greasy spoons. They were pretty awful. And with the passage of time - and the widespread availability of microwave ovens in the workplace - people expect a little bit more than a hot dog, know what I mean? That’s a reference to The Long Good Friday. Doesn’t actually work; greasy spoons didn’t sell hot dogs, although they were modelled a little bit on the idea of what an American diner might be like.
In summary, everything that you notice is a pose; the things that aren’t poses, you don’t notice them. You ignore them until they become a pose. And these pretentious restaurants, they’re all on the edge of bankruptcy. I can’t hate them because they’re dicing with death, and they’ll be gone in no time. I mean, I used to be wary of Borders, the bookshop, but at the same time I was seduced by its air of trendiness. It’s air of being a coffee shop that also sold books. Gone. I’m continually surprised that YO! Sushi is still around; one day they’ll go into administration. Wagamama, the rest of them. Gone, and people will miss 'em.
“Barrage of spam”, hold that thought.
Fair enough.
And honestly, the “goes out of its way” to look simplistic line I used earlier was stolen verbatim from a friend of mine who also likes the place I like, but doesn’t care either way for the decor. Sure, there are lower key places in the world, but once you get into a certain level of food and drink snobbery, you can just assume the owners have hired a decorator. They just have, except these guys didn’t opt for the same six little girls who design every other yuppie joint in the country. Also, while the “Eat, Sleep, Whiskey” sign may be a bit much, it’s not as Overtly Anti-Cute Cute as it seems; the place is a restaurant with rooms upstairs to sleep in, plus an unimaginably large whiskey selection, so while it is in part a “Look at me! We’re not cute!” sign, it’s also an apt description of what the restaurant does.
I don’t want to turn this into discussion of Longman & Eagle, though if y’all want to, I’m game because I love that fucking place, but it was just an example. We all know that we can go to Mel’s Diner and get some mighty fine grits, but my point was (and maybe I should have made this clearer in my OP) when I want to go to a moderately nice place with good food, and don’t have a problem with all that hippie locally-sourced shit, why does it have to look like this? When I’m in the mood for a place with a more creative menu and better chefs than Chicago Joe’s, I’d like to avoid the sparkles. This has is harder than it should be.
And yes, that is my photobucket. Also, I love, love, love food trucks. One of many things I miss about Los Angeles. 
I bet you like to drink your beer out of a clean glass, too!
There was a British comedy film (whose name I’ve forgotten) that had a scene in a motorway cafe where the fork and knife were both chained to the table. And the chains were too short to allow both to be used simultaneously.
Now that would be real greasy-spoonness. (Spoondom?)
I feel your pain. If you ever get to England - take this site with you:
“Greasy spoon” may well be the one and only culinary term that means the same thing on both sides of the Pond.
Huh. I didn’t realize they actually did have places to sleep upstairs. That removes most of my criticism of that sign. It is more descriptive than I realized. So, I give it a pass.
Damn, that last picture MeanOldLady linked looks like something out a of nightmare in some middle school fantasy novel.
I have less problem with cute when it has utility. For instance this restaurant in Santa Barbara is one of my favorite places of all time:
Blue Agave
I suppose some people would call that cute and that’s fine. But, those booths are so damn comfy that I don’t care how it looks. It just works. I’m ok with cute when the food/booze high hits me and I can sit back with glazed eyes and not have a care in the world.
On the other hand in Philly, Pizzeria Stella is the worst kind of cute:
STELLA! The layout is uncomfortable. The decorations while interesting at first glance quickly become boring. It’s like a bumper sticker; ha ha at first and it is all downhill from there. And, the seats? OUCH! They are a small step up from sitting as king of the seven kingdoms. In a moment of generosity, I will say it is neat that the pizza oven has Stella written on it in tile. But, that’s because I have the mentality of a 5 year old.
**pricciar ** what’s with the curtain thing? Is there someone in the next bed getting their bedpan?
Here here… First off. i have no class so I’m naturally excluded from these places… But if I read “Farm to Table” again I will vomit.
Secondly… why do i need to know the chef’s name… or who owns the restaurant… and that its part of the the guys that own this or that…
As a kid in Chicago… I never knew who owned Army and Lou’s and could give less of a fuck. What the world and especially Atlanta needs is more of this… http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/wp-content/uploads/army-and-lous.jpg
and this http://www.panoramio.com/photo/64322622
and far less of this shit… http://www.x929.ca/shows/beharrell/wp-content/uploads/Bed-Restaurant-Miami.jpg
The last one is Bed… a horrible trendy restaurant my ex wife wasted good money at… that shit lasted less than a year here…
I have eaten in the first two restaurants in the OP 
And they are exactly what is described - hipster pretentious bullshit.
The food is pretty good, though.
I give you the Cove. Carwash, laundromat, and fine diner. (Please note, I said diner-not dining). Live music on the weekends, wine and beer tastings once a month. And decidely not cute.
http://thecove.us/
One word names. Tru. Melt. Butter. Flux. Reef. Or numbers: 128 at the River. 1410. 232 at Park.
How pretentious can you get?
Yikes
Yikes
I guess I’m getting caught up on the word “cute”. It kind of applies to the first two places in your OP, the first of which I actually rather like (I’m a sucker for exposed brick, and I actually like the window frame thing). The second is trying too hard with the Jetsons look–it’s easy to overdo. The third place I don’t especially like, but I don’t get why it’s “vomitously cute”; it’s just a little modern for my taste. The decor wouldn’t put me off if the food was good.
Prasino is an even better example of the modern aesthetic that I don’t like. You see it everywhere–light wood stain + brushed aluminum + bright white walls + way too much light. I like my restaurants fairly dark with lights at the table, but that’s because I don’t like going out to restaurants to be seen. I don’t object to the existence of such places; they’re just not my thing. I want to eat without feeling like I’m being stared at and judged.
What I really hate about Prasino is that they’ve crammed in so many tables that the people at the next one are right up your ass. That’s great if they’re cool people and I’m in that sort of mood, but in a place like that the odds are low. This is a restaurant trend I can’t get into.
I like restaurants that are thoughtfully designed, almost regardless of the style. (Even the modern look that I don’t care for can be done well.) You can certainly overdesign a place, but you can oversimplify it just as easily.
Whew!
See, I don’t mind the first one, but this STELLA! business is exactly the kind of pointless cutery that grates on my nerves. That ICU-Chic look is such a forceful combination of vintage and adorable that I can’t take it. I think the curtains drove me over the egde (though I would eat the shit out of that pizza).
Oh jeez, I hope those candles burned it down. While not exactly the kind of cute I was talking about, that’s still the kind of place I’d never go to. I don’t care if god himself cooked the food. Okay, maybe I’d go if the chef were god.
I wanted to like the first place, as I am a huge fan of exposed brick --hell, the brick was a great deal of why I rented my first apt (that I could afford it was a greater deal)-- but when I was in there, I was like, “Oh, come on. Really with the painted window frames?” Take those damn things down, please. As for the vomitously cute place, truly, the photo does not convey just how syrupy sweet and girly this place is in person. I have male friends who won’t even step inside.
Btw, true story re: Prasino.
Friend: We should go to Prasino. It’s right on the Blue Line [train that runs close to our apts].
Me: No.
Friend: Have you been? I hear the food is really good.
Me: I have been, and it is good.
Friend: So then…?
Me: I just… I can’t take the decor.
Friend: :rolleyes: