This anecdote concerns an awful restaurant with a great name.

When I first moved to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I was alerted to a Thai restaurant. This surprised me--a Thai restaurant in a rural Kentucky town of 35,000--so I decided to check it out. "It's a trip," my friend told me.

The restaurant was housed in the former office of a closed down roadside motel on route 41. The motel's sign was still prominent, and both the office and the courtyard motel itself were made out of weirdly attractive jagged stone. The motel had been known as the Chicagoan, for though it was over 7 hours away from the Windy City, route 41 travels due north through Indiana, becoming Lakeshore Drive. I loved the idea of naming a motel in this manner.

Anyway, the restaurant was pretty humble. A slovenly, middle-aged black man took our orders back to the little Thai lady who was doing the cooking. I was a seafood-eating vegetarian then and asked our waiter to make sure that my dish was made with shrimp only. "Sure, why not," he said. This was when I deduced that the man was very drunk.

The cook kept hollering at him--"you no good husband" was the phrase I heard most often--and when my food arrived, there were equal portions of shrimp, chicken, and pork in it. I later found out from former patrons that she pretty much gave you whatever she felt like cooking. The kicker was that her husband sat down at my table and proceeded to light up a cigarette while asking what we thought of the food. "It's delicious," my date said--and it was pretty good. Very, very hot. "I never had much of a taste for it myself," our waiter said, exhaling another cloud of smoke across our table. Needless to say this place did not last long.

The name of this restaurant? NICE THAI.

Al's Fun In The Bun
1931 W Foster Ave, Chicago, IL 60640

Bumble! The worst!

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote: NICE THAI.

So many bad Thai puns!
In Portland, OR, there is Beau Thai, Thaiphoon and Thai Noon. These names are CRAP.

Somewhere or other, there is a Tie Me Up Noodles and Once Upon a Thai. And I would bet half a ham that there is Thai'm For Dinner, Thai-Tanic, Fit to be Thai'd or a Thai-Riffic out there somewhere.

itchy mcgoo wrote:Somewhere or other, there is a Tie Me Up Noodles and Once Upon a Thai.

We have a place named Thai Me Up. It's actually pretty good. (I mean, the restaurant part of the restaurant.)

horsewhip wrote:

rayj wrote:http://www.yelp.com/biz/mqz0tIva9I7MjCVEthEdPw

Yep. It is called 'Phuket'.

I was about to post this. Thank you.

I ride past this on the 15 every morning on the way to work.

Hey! Seattle!

I'll look for your band...

There's a Vietnamese grocer's in Louisville called Binh Phuoc. I'm not sure what the proper pronunciation is, but I know how I pronounce it. Funniest establishment since Cox Smokers Outlet.

WOK THIS WAY in Oakham

itchy mcgoo wrote:Bumble! The worst!

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote: NICE THAI.

So many bad Thai puns!
In Portland, OR, there is Beau Thai, Thaiphoon and Thai Noon. These names are CRAP.

Somewhere or other, there is a Tie Me Up Noodles and Once Upon a Thai. And I would bet half a ham that there is Thai'm For Dinner, Thai-Tanic, Fit to be Thai'd or a Thai-Riffic out there somewhere.

On those same lines, we have in Atlanta a Vietnamese restaurant named "What the Pho" (that's pronounced fuh, not foe, of course.)

This really should be in Best Restaurant Names:
I found an Asian food court when I was last in Sydney, AU called 'Eating World'.

It was incredible. It was Eating World.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:There's a Vietnamese grocer's in Louisville called Binh Phuoc. I'm not sure what the proper pronunciation is, but I know how I pronounce it. Funniest establishment since Cox Smokers Outlet.

There's a Thai noodle restaurant in Chelsea that's more self-consiously named Phat Phuc. I took me a long while of passing it everyday on the way to work before I 'got it'.

There's also a horrible noodle bar on Oxford street called 'Chopstix' and a pair of chopsticks make up the X on the restaurant sign. I hate it.