Naming a new restaurant? Consider the past

Naming is a sensitive endeavor. But restaurants always must do it. Well, almost always. (Representational image)

Sometimes you can come up with the perfect name for a restaurant and someone will still manage to screw up what it means. When Anita Lo and Jennifer Scism set up Annisa in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 2000, they were heartened by an early review that seemed to get it — until it didn’t.

The piece picked up from the word Lo and Scism had chosen: Derived from Arabic, it referred to an enchanting young woman. The review rhapsodized about how that reflected the feminism of the enterprise: The business was established by two women and had a wine list made up of bottles almost entirely from vineyards or wineries owned or run by women. And even those graceful saucer-shaped crystal oil lamps on every dinner table, the piece continued, why, they look just like silicone breast implants. Groan went the owners.

Naming is a sensitive endeavor. But restaurants always must do it. Well, almost always. The beautiful ground-floor dining room at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan was once called Untitled — a cute concept considering all the unnamed works in the institution’s collection. Chefs Michael Anthony and Suzanne Cupps managed to attract crowds for nearly 10 years to the delicious New American menu at their high-ceilinged glass-walled “nameless” wonder until it fell victim to Covid-19’s economic devastation in 2021. But even “Untitled” is a name.

So your restaurant really needs a handle — something that will make it easy for customers to find and remember you, a lexical brand that says something about what you’re trying to achieve — anything but “EATS!”

Some places simply use their address: 40 Maltby Street here in London is a magnet for walk-ins who know exactly where to go for chef Stephen Williams’ unpretentious but delectable British fare. In New York, there is the famously vegan and pricey Eleven Madison Park.

Others are more playful and poetic. Chef Adejoké Bakare’s Chishuru — newly reopened a couple of blocks from Oxford Circus — takes its name from “to eat in silence” in Nigeria’s Hausa language because the food is so good that you have to spend time savoring instead of talking. In Haggerston, on the other side of the British capital, Planque — the wine club that doubles as the showcase for Sebastian Myers’ masterful cooking — takes the French for “hideaway” and, cheekily, alludes to “plonk,” the UK slang for bad wine.

In Houston, meanwhile, Tom Cunanan’s practically retail, walk-in, takeout (or eat in the corner) Filipino food shop hits a cultural trifecta with Soy Pinoy: a reference to the Chinese condiment widely used in the Philippines, which is also the cognate “I am” in Spanish, reflecting the deep Hispanic influence in the cuisine. Pinoy is the slangy way Filipinos refer to themselves. So, literally, “I am Filipino” means many influences define me.

Of course, names can simply reflect a restaurant’s specialty: “Joe’s Pizza,” where you can get midnight slices in three New York outlets, or Una Pizza Napoletana on Orchard Street in Manhattan, where Anthony Mangieri makes his magical pies. And then there’s family. Lyle’s in London’s Shoreditch district is the family name of chef James Lowe’s mother. Two of my favourite spots in New York carry the nicknames the co-founders gave their grandmothers: Mimi on Sullivan Street and Babs on MacDougal. El Bulli in Catalonia was named for the owners’ French bulldogs.

But what if there is no playfully poetic name that comes to mind, in any language? Or you have more than one extra-special specialty? Or you don’t like your gran? That’s when I gravitate to restaurants whose names have a sense of place as well as time. Living in Britain, it’s often pubs that work that kind of nomenclatural enchantment.

At the beginning of their thousand-year history, many simply hung standards or signs featuring symbols so a mostly illiterate populace could identify the public houses where they could gather, gab and quaff. Red Lions became ubiquitous after James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603 — at the death of the childless Elizabeth I — because of the new king’s decree that public gathering places advertise their loyalty by displaying the symbol of his native land. There are at least 500 pubs named The Red Lion in the UK today. So that sign with the Plough or Swan or Crown is a physical signifier of where you can go for a hearty alehouse laugh.

Of course, repetitive names do little to separate you from the crowd. Thus, historical allusion helps add distinction. One of the claimants to the title of oldest pub in the UK is in Nottingham: Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem commemorates the spot where Richard the Lionheart supposedly gathered his men for a crusade in the late 12th century. Others hang portraits of nobility (The Queen’s Head, the Duke of York, the Duke of Wellington etc.) or play up some prestigious connection to the past. The Drapers Arms, a gastropub in the British capital’s Islington borough, operates in a historic space leased from the 662-year-old Worshipful Company of Drapers, one of the hundred-plus surviving livery companies — associations of merchants and specialist craftsmen — in the city. (Arms refers to the heraldic coat of arms that often decorate signs at pub entrances.)

I was having dinner at The Drapers Arms when I met Will Lloyd-Baker, a chef who made his career in London and is scheduled to reopen a pub in the Cotswolds in early December called Foston’s Ash. An odd name, I said, and asked if he’s keeping it. “It’s bad luck to change a pub’s name,” he explained. It’s also probably bad business to change one locals are familiar with — and are sentimental about. It apparently originated from a toll collector named Foston who levied his fees by a large ash tree.

Old names have resonance. Delmonico’s has been in New York City since 1827 and continues to be despite changes of ownership, location and management. The Ritz restaurant (in the eponymous hotel) takes its name from Swiss hotelier Caesar Ritz, who first opened in Paris and then in London. Why think of putting on another when you are the synonym for luxe (or a cracker, if you’re snide).

Even younger establishments can recycle the old. Estela — Ignacio Mattos’ pioneering restaurant in New York’s Soho — reused the name of a previous business. Now, everyone assumes Estela was a member of Mattos’ family. He made it his own. In East London, Hector’s has kept the signage of a previous occupant of its space: J. Scott & Sons. It makes it appear as if the wine bar has been there for decades rather than just the past two years. The neighbours love it.

It pays not to sweep in and inflict unwanted change to the native gazetteer. But no rule is hard and fast. Last year, there was much ado about the UK’s biggest pub chain doing just that: breezing into a Scottish town to rename a local pub. The townsfolk were up in arms, saying it was an attempt to erase their history and the centuries-old local legend of a faithful dog that dutifully found food for her starving master. But the corporation was adamant, and the place is now The Willow Tree. The old name? The Black Bitch.

Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.

Credit: Bloomberg