Another Five Spot

I wrote about numeral-named restaurants, including Berkeley's new Five restaurant (named in honor of the five senses), last week. Now the San Francisco Chronicle's food critic, Michael Bauer, confirms that it's not merely a phenomenon but a trend:

Restaurant names, like certain dishes or ingredients, have moments of fame. Remember when everything French was "Chez," or when single words such as Fork, Spoon and Ramekin ruled? Now we're into letters and numbers - as in A16 and RN74.

The latest is the lamest: 5A5 Steak Lounge. As with the other number and letter places, once you know what it means, it's easier to remember.

A16 and RN74 are named after highways in Italy and France, the areas that inform the food on the menus. In this case, A5 refers to the top grade of Japanese Kobe. A steakhouse named after prime beef makes some sense; after all, A1 Steak Sauce has had a long run on the retail shelves.

However, it seems A5 could be confused with A16, so the owners of that restaurant raised objections. To circumvent a legal tangle, the owners of A5 changed the name. The explanation from the Web site: "Indulge your five senses with the A5 experience." Still, 5A5 doesn't roll off the tongue.

Worse still, Bauer writes, "the confusion with the name is consistent with the rest of the experience."

Read the rest of the review.

In other prime-number news, Häagen-Dazs recently introduced a new brand called five™ (yes, all lower case), whose claim to fame is that it's "crafted with only five ingredients."

Comments

[Roy Jacobsen]

Off on a tangent: You mentioned the "five senses." Did you know we have more than the five everybody thinks of? And I'm not talking ESP or X-files stuff here; they're really quite normal.

Besides the standard five--sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch--we also have the following senses: balance, pain, location and motion of our body parts, temperature differences, and time.

Some people appear to have a sense of direction (that is, an internal compass; my wife is one of these people), and some have been able to teach themselves a sort of echo-location, like bats use.

[Bob Cumbow]

Seattle's own 5 Spot restaurant is located at a familiar intersection where five streets come together. It's a wonderful place. http://www.chowfoods.com/five/

[Diana Howard]

This trend of number-naming is just depressing. The world of words is being shoved aside enough as it is. When it comes to evoking sensual pleasure (like eating) we really need to stick to words. # remind me of those silly made up "CRX" "SLR" car names.
Enough with reduction already!