Restaurant Names in the News

Noted recently:

Food Coma, a bánh mì and crêpe café, opened this month in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood. Its tagline is “Eat. Drink. Eat. Pass out. Repeat”; the logo emphasizes the “pass out” part of the instructions. Death and near-death are surprisingly popular themes in gastronomic naming right now: see Dead Letter wine, Dead Fish restaurant, and Death’s Door spirits. (Via SFEater.com.)

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Wales Today reports that a Welsh prison, HMP Cardiff, will open “a fine dining restaurant” called Clink. It’s a nice play on words: Besides being a slang term meaning prison, “clink” is the sound of two beverage glasses saluting each other. For some reason I’d assumed that “clink” for “prison” was a relatively recent Americanism. Wrong: the OED says it surfaced in mid-16th century England. Clink was the name “of a noted prison in Southwark” (a district in London) and was “later used elsewhere (esp. in Devon or Cornwall) for a small and dismal prison or prison-cell, a lock-up.” Now you know. (Via @brandstrat.)

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CLINK. is also the name of a restaurant in Boston that occupies the site of “the storied Charles Street jail.” Yes, the name is in all caps, and yes, that’s a period. As in “sentence,” perhaps? (Via @wisekaren.)

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And from the Department of What Did You Expect, a diner in his 40s suffered a heart attack last Saturday while eating the Triple Bypass Burger at the Heart Attack Grill (tagline: “Taste Worth Dying For!”) in Las Vegas. He survived. Other patrons were unfazed. “It says right on the door, it's hazardous to your health,” diner CJ Beeman told the local Fox channel. I wish the gentleman a speedy recovery, and I certainly hope that if he ever visits Oakland he isn’t tempted to eat at Food Coma. (Via @dustbury.)

Comments

[Linnaeus]

But isn't a "food coma" that sleepy feeling you might get after eating a particularly large meal?