Last week, my wife, who rarely forwards me anything other than satirical Onion stories and adorable dog videos (the great ying/yang of our daily existence), passed along an e-mail with photos of some hilariously bad restaurant names. Two days later, Igor, my Russian intellectual bud in Houston, sent me the very same e-mail. These are two people with the kind of IQs you equate with MacArthur genius grants, not e-mail spam about eateries with names like The Golden Stool, Phât Phúc, and Cabbages & Condoms.

Last week, I also noticed that Todd Kliman at the Washingtonian was fishing around on his weekly chat for pretentious restaurant names. I figured I could buck this mini-trend no more.

More bad restaurant names/photos after the jump.

Read More “Terrible Restaurant Names: We Can’t Live Without (Mocking) Them” »

I obviously have nothing against Makoto, the meditative Japanese bento box of a restaurant in the Palisades, which specializes in kaiseki cuisine. I mean, I included the place among my 50 favorite restaurants in the D.C. area.

What does bother me about Makoto, however, is its stranglehold on the top spot in the annual D.C./Baltimore Zagat survey.

The 2010 guide just hit the streets, and once again Makoto tops the list. It scored 29 out of a possible 30 points in the food category, tying for No. 1 with Patrick O’Connell’s Inn at Little Washington. I’m not sure how many years in a row now Makoto has claimed the crown, but I know the restaurant also tied for first last year with—yep, you guessed it—the Inn at Little Washington. Makoto also won in 2006.

The obvious question here is this: How can this tiny restaurant continually claim the top spot with D.C.-area Zagat raters and yet never crack the top tier of the local critics’ lists? Makoto is No. 36 among the Washingtonian’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2009 and didn’t even make the cut on Tom Sietsema’s most recent Dining Guide.

We may never know the reasons for Makoto’s dominance, but last year when the 2009 Zagat guide was released, I wrote a column for the Onion’s A.V. Club in which I speculated on possible explanations for Makoto’s winning streak:

Read More “WTF: Makoto Is Once Again the Top-Rated Restaurant in the Annual Zagat Guide” »

The brilliant parody aims for and hits a number of targets: corporations jumping onto the green bandwagon, vacuous TV morning programs, even the dining public’s naivete over what foods are really good for the environment.

Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature