There is a Vietnamese restaurant called Viet Nom Nom. I refuse to try it, simply because the name is so stupid.
Jokes about their pizza aside, a real Detroit style deep dish has a thicker crust and doesn’t flop around. And if you’re not interested in trying it, oh well.
Sweetie’s is a little ice cream stand near us. Because we only think to go there when it is uncomfortably hot out, we’ve always called it Sweatie’s. I’ve mentioned this to a number of friends over the years. Out of the blue, I heard someone refer to Sweatie’s ice cream. When asked, she couldn’t remember why she called it that.
I think that’s genius. My former local chinese, in a town called Shirley, was called The Shirley Temple, which was also genius.
Kentucky Raw Chicken used to turn people off. Their name change was very sensible.
For some reason Pizza places end up with problematic names. Shakey’s Pizza always bothered me – it sounded as if it was named after someone with a neurological disorder – and it was!
Either that, or name after a Dick Tracy villain.
When I lived in Binghamton NY we had a chain of Pudgy’s Pizza. That strikes m as poor advertising. The Pudgy’s I used to go to (they DID have good slices) is gone, but a quick Google search shows that there still lots of Pudgy’s pizzas out there.
Little Caesar’s has already been mentioned (does anyone even consider the Edward G. Robinson/small time crook angle?), but there also used to be Godfather’s Pizza, allowing you to support (at least in name) don Corleone and Family. I haven’t seen one in ages, but Wikipedia says there are still over 500 of them around.
The name gives me visions of small children being violently ill in a restaurant.
We’ve got a “Phat Phuc” restaurant. Hilarious.
I remember eating at one as a child. I thought Denny’s had bought them all long ago but perhaps not.
Not a restaurant but there’s a tattoo parlor near us named “Sweeney Tats”. Because when you’re in a chair and a stranger is pressing a sharp implement against your skin, you want to be reminded of Sweeney Todd. :rolleyes:
Better than “Barely Legal Sea Foods.”
Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue is home to the Chinese takeout restaurant Fu King.
I ate there in 1979. I once got what I thought was a simple hot dog. Bit into it and this yellow goo started seeping out. I nearly lost it.
It was a cheese dog. basically spray cheese squirted into it. I would have been OK with that if I had known ahead of time.
I had always been curious about the name, so this post inspired me to look it up. The name comes from the Legal Cash Market which preceded it, which in turn took its name from the Legal Trading Stamp company.
That’s the original one. It took its name originally from a combination of the first name and last name of its two founders in 1957. But they promoted based on the children’s book The Story of Little Black Sambo from 1899. (Sambo was originally supposed to be from South India, but the version I read when I was a kid in the 1950s depicted the family as African.)
It eventually became a nationwide chain. I remember eating at one in the 1970s. The chain eventually went under, but the original has been continued by the founder’s grandson.
In Minneapolis we have several locations of Rusty Taco that have been around for years. The urban dictionary definition must have finally caught up with them since they’ve recently rebranded as R Taco.
Here in Panama there’s a mob-themed La Nostra Italian restaurant.
My favorite name in Panama was the Dago Restaurant that used to be on the Transisthmian Highway. I think the name was just taken from the nickname for Diego, with no awareness of the derogatory meaning.
a popular beach place is the Sanitary fish market and restaurant
ETA: I realize we’re not talking about the actual food, but rather the names of restaurants. I have seen restaurants with soy or soybean in their names.
We had one down my way in the South Bay. Lots of cartoon tigers on the menus and placemats. And pancakes were heavily featured on the breakfast menu.
It was the very last place where we could get a cup of coffee for five cents.
Pol’s Pot? I’d go there.
There was one place I’ve never gone because of the name, called “The Milk Bar”, but that’s mainly because it was not obvious what kind of cuisine it was from the outside. I don’t walk into restaurants if I have no idea what to expect inside. Maybe a lot of people were like that, because they are no longer in business.
I just looked it up, they were American cuisine. Supposedly named because of their “all white menu”. I’ve also seen mention of scantily clad waitresses, so I’m guessing it actually was a titty joke with a retconned explanation. Oh well.