But not even the most exciting fillings could compare with the true joy I felt at the sight of three slices of grilled cheese. That's right, three.

I tucked that oddity in the back of my head and slammed crusty, cheesy bites into my mouth. The sandwich, by the way, combines Fontina, Swiss, cheddar and slightly aged goat cheese surrounded by farm bread (white, with a sourdough start), fried in butter in a large, cast-iron camping griddle craftily positioned where grill grates would be. If you're wondering where that other half goes, it doesn't exist. Standard uses three slices of bread, two are sandwiched together and the other is cut in half for that special third slice.

With the number three still bouncing in my head, I called Standard co-owner Tad Curtz to figure out the reasoning for the prime-numbered sandwich.

"Why is the grilled cheese served in three?" I asked Curtz. He laughs, and lets out a long "ummmm" and then repeats the question out loud. "Well, there's not really, like, a simple answer," he finally admits and then opens his mouth for another exaggerated "Ummmmm."

"Well, I sort of feel like when I opened this restaurant people thought I was crazy and everything I did here was weird to people. When I was working on my menu," he then explains, trying different breads and cheeses, and finally answers, "I felt like two halves weren't enough."

I strongly agreed with his statement, telling him how very I excited I was by the sight of three slices. But then the 31-year-old kept going: "There's an article in The Onion that mocked the Gillette Mach3. It said something like 'We're not going to do Mach 5 , we're going straight for Mach 6. Fuck it.' I went straight for three. Fuck it."

Photo by Stefanie Gans

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.

This one has to be fake, right? I mean, cum on!

No way! This has to be Photoshopped.

This one is real. It's located in Houston.

To view the complete list, go to Food Network Humor and prepare to have your lunch ruined.

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:

[I]t likely has to do with at least two factors: Zagat raters are self-selected (which statisticians will tell you can lead to survey anomalies) and all restaurants, regardless of cuisine, are weighed on the same 30-point scale (which means that, technically, a well-executed taco joint could top Citronelle in the food category). That’s not to say Makoto doesn’t deserve its lofty 29-point rating, but perhaps Makoto’s customers are less burdened by expectations than those who enter Komi or Palena or Eve. Or maybe Makoto’s fans have just learned to stuff the ballot box without detection.

A year later, after scanning the latest Zagat guide, I'd like to make a few more observations. For starters: Not only did Makoto and the Inn at Little Washington repeat as top performers this year, but so did Matchbox (top-rated for burgers, tied with Five Guys), Pasta Plus (top-rated pizza, tied with 2Amys), El Mariachi (somehow tied for the best Mexican with Oyamel), and probably others that I can't verify right now.

Now consider this: The 2010 guide says it is based on "7,235 avid local diners" who "collectively...bring roughly 1.1 million annual meals' worth of experience to this Survey."

Guess how many people took part in last year's survey? That's right, 7,235.

Something stinks here. I have an e-mail to the D.C. Zagat editor Olga Boikess, who is a kind and reasonable person. I'm hoping she can shed some light on what has historically been a very opaque voting process.