Eat at [Verb]

These Bay Area restaurants don’t just take orders: If their names are any indication, they give them, too.

Melt! (San Francisco)

The exclamation point is part of the name, and melting is the raison d’être, of this fondue café in San Francisco’s North Beach.

 

Build (Berkeley)

One Yelper called it “the Subway of pizzas. You enter a line and the employees make the pizza as you like.” The slogan is “Find Your Inner Pizza,” which does not sound appetizing at all.

 

Toss (Berkeley, just a few doors away from Build)

I love the wordmark, but every time I see the name I want to finish the sentence: “… your cookies.” Maybe this is where all those inner pizzas end up.

 

Gather (Berkeley)

Hip, centrally located – in the greenest building in Berkeley –and designed to please demanding foodies of every persuasion, from gluten-free vegans to whole-animal carnivores. (Are you surprised to learn the idea for restaurant came out of a “vision” during “a retreat in the California desert”? Neither am I.) The name suggests hunter-gatherers as well as gathering around the table.

 

Assemble (Richmond)

Yes, it’s another way to say “gather,” but in this case there’s a historical resonance to the name that makes it a perfect fit for the location, in a former Ford Motor Company assembly plant on the bay in Richmond.

Comments

[Jamie]

The "find your inner pizza" line reminded me of the ill-advised attempt to tell the Dalai Lama the "make me one with everything" joke: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3199

[tanita]

TOSS would have been so much better a pizza joint name... because you can actually toss the pizza crust. What does tossing have to do with noodles?

Big eye roll at GATHER, but the sign is purty, and the name does resonate, despite its vision-quest if-I-take-enought-Peyote-it'll-come-to-me vibe.