Me Chew At.
“I’ll meet you at… Me Chew At”.
Get Stuffed.
As a name I mean.
I actually like these a whole lot.
Does your wife have a favorite writer or artist or suchlike whose name (or output) we could riff from? My old boss was co-owner (with her husband and BIL, who was the chef) of a similar type place called The Hamlet, named because the husband loved Shakespeare.
I like Oui as well. But make sure you have large restrooms.
But it seems a little pretentious.
There is a new upper end restaurant started by a local that already had a very, very successful restaurant.
The name – Modis.
Why Modis? More of this. Mo-dis.
In French – “Plus de ceci”
That’s also pretentious. Hmmmm….
Welcome home - maison bienvenue
Get thee to bablefish.com
On the other hand, there is an italian place that I go to that for the life of me I can never remember the name of. That’s not to good for business.
Great suggestion, but there was a wonderful bookstore in downtown SF (a bit of an institution actually) called “A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books” that closed fairly recently, so any similar title will likely be seen as a rather craven and transparent way to piggyback on its long-standing reputation.
I was hoping the “Cafe” would take the pretentious edge off of “Oui”. Also, if you hear “Oui” on its own, I think you’re expecting upscale fine dining. The “Cafe” reduces this expectation to something more low-key.
My wife’s name is middle-eastern sounding (though she’s of solid mid-west USA stock), so even her name might suggest something different than what she wants. Plus, even though it’s her cafe (her menu, her recipes, her decor, her husband’s music choices), her best friend would be the day-to-day manager (she’ll need to keep her day job to afford running this place, at least only at first, one hopes), so there seems little point to that.
Chez Guavara would be irresistable if it weren’t so politically loaded, and anyone who asks “Why did you name it that?” will meet a blank face from said manager (great guy in many respects, but not really fluent on Latin American politics). Mrs. AG wants something positive and life-affirming without being sappy. Bonne Idée and Oui Cafe both meet that bar, so far (though she has also attached herself to The Peasant and the Poet as a possibility).
It’s funny, but if I heard “The Hamlet”, I would think William Faulkner. She’s not as attached to pop or high culture as much as I am–we travel a ton and she’d be more likely to name it after one of Paris’ arrondissements than a favorite author or work.
Or naked women (I think Oui was the name of an old French nudie mag).
It was a Playboy offshoot I think and was a far superior magazine.
How about Tout Suite?
Can you work in Traiteur (trat-tur)?
A traiteur is to the Francophone nations what a trattoria is to Italy: a mostly takeout, partly catering place with modest or no eat-in seating.
Le Traiteur de (votre localité), peut-être?
Drawback: any wingnuts/illiterates in your area would change it to Traitor.
If you have a particularly twisted sense of humour, or the café’s near a landfill, you could call it La Poubelle. Sounds dainty and all, but poubelle means ‘garbage’. (French. What a language… 
)
If you serve poutine? La Poutinette? Also the name of a sexy superheroine from Québec.
You need to find a word in French that sounds good, that is short, and easy to pronounce BUT has no connection or a dumb meaning in English.
That way people will say “I wonder what that word means, in English.” They’ll go home and look it up and it’ll be a dumb thing and the person will say “Hmmm, I wonder what relevence that has?” Either way they’ll then remember the name of the cafe.
Just make sure the French word is short and easily prononunced
Oo La La ?
I always liked Bistro D’Burden from The Tick
Brian
Yeah, several of us pointed that out. shrug
Cafe du Nord (Cafe North)
Cafe Les Amis (friends)
Fourchette (fork)
I like the last one best, mostly because I like words that end with ‘ette’.
Oui, the magazine, is apparently still around, now as a hardcore mag. I don’t know how defensive they are about their name and whether it might be copyrighted - one imagines they’re no Disney. Still, I think just plain Oui with nothing else might be best avoided, for the connotation if nothing else.
Well, based on your wife’s preference I would call it (depending on where she gets her references):
Overture
Clare
or
Bunco Harry’s
Minx
Moxie
Coco
Soleil
Breeze
Azure
Caprice
Another vote against Oui–I also thought of the porn mag.
Lou’s your lunch.
Badinage (french word for banter which is light, jestful exchange)
Voisin’s (Early french aviation theme and an excuse to decorate the walls)