• Home
  • popular
  • Events
  • Submit New Event
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • News
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Home + Design
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • Innovation
  • Sports
  • Charity Guide
  • children
  • education
  • health
  • veterans
  • SOCIAL SERVICES
  • ARTS + CULTURE
  • animals
  • lgbtq
  • New Charity
  • Series
  • Delivery Limited
  • DTX Giveaway 2012
  • DTX Ski Magic
  • dtx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Your Home in the Sky
  • DTX Best of 2013
  • DTX Trailblazers
  • Tastemakers Dallas 2017
  • Healthy Perspectives
  • Neighborhood Eats 2015
  • The Art of Making Whiskey
  • DTX International Film Festival
  • DTX Tatum Brown
  • Tastemaker Awards 2016 Dallas
  • DTX McCurley 2014
  • DTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • DTX Beyond presents Party Perfect
  • DTX Texas Health Resources
  • DART 2018
  • Alexan Central
  • State Fair 2018
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Zatar
  • CityLine
  • Vision Veritas
  • Okay to Say
  • Hearts on the Trinity
  • DFW Auto Show 2015
  • Northpark 50
  • Anteks Curated
  • Red Bull Cliff Diving
  • Maggie Louise Confections Dallas
  • Gaia
  • Red Bull Global Rally Cross
  • NorthPark Holiday 2015
  • Ethan's View Dallas
  • DTX City Centre 2013
  • Galleria Dallas
  • Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty Luxury Homes in Dallas Texas
  • DTX Island Time
  • Simpson Property Group SkyHouse
  • DIFFA
  • Lotus Shop
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Dallas
  • Clothes Circuit
  • DTX Tastemakers 2014
  • Elite Dental
  • Elan City Lights
  • Dallas Charity Guide
  • DTX Music Scene 2013
  • One Arts Party at the Plaza
  • J.R. Ewing
  • AMLI Design District Vibrant Living
  • Crest at Oak Park
  • Braun Enterprises Dallas
  • NorthPark
  • Victory Park
  • DTX Common Desk
  • DTX Osborne Advisors
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • DFW Showcase Tour of Homes
  • DTX Neighborhood Eats
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • DTX Auto Awards
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2017
  • Nasher Store
  • Guardian of The Glenlivet
  • Zyn22
  • Dallas Rx
  • Yellow Rose Gala
  • Opendoor
  • DTX Sun and Ski
  • Crow Collection
  • DTX Tastes of the Season
  • Skye of Turtle Creek Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival
  • DTX Charity Challenge
  • DTX Culture Motive
  • DTX Good Eats 2012
  • DTX_15Winks
  • St. Bernard Sports
  • Jose
  • DTX SMU 2014
  • DTX Up to Speed
  • st bernard
  • Ardan West Village
  • DTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Taste the Difference
  • Parktoberfest 2016
  • Bob's Steak and Chop House
  • DTX Smart Luxury
  • DTX Earth Day
  • DTX_Gaylord_Promoted_Series
  • IIDA Lavish
  • Huffhines Art Trails 2017
  • Red Bull Flying Bach Dallas
  • Y+A Real Estate
  • Beauty Basics
  • DTX Pet of the Week
  • Long Cove
  • Charity Challenge 2014
  • Legacy West
  • Wildflower
  • Stillwater Capital
  • Tulum
  • DTX Texas Traveler
  • Dallas DART
  • Soldiers' Angels
  • Alexan Riveredge
  • Ebby Halliday Realtors
  • Zephyr Gin
  • Sixty Five Hundred Scene
  • Christy Berry
  • Entertainment Destination
  • Dallas Art Fair 2015
  • St. Bernard Sports Duck Head
  • Jameson DTX
  • Alara Uptown Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival fall 2017
  • DTX Tastemakers 2015
  • Cottonwood Arts Festival
  • The Taylor
  • Decks in the Park
  • Alexan Henderson
  • Gallery at Turtle Creek
  • Omni Hotel DTX
  • Red on the Runway
  • Whole Foods Dallas 2018
  • Artizone Essential Eats
  • Galleria Dallas Runway Revue
  • State Fair 2016 Promoted
  • Trigger's Toys Ultimate Cocktail Experience
  • Dean's Texas Cuisine
  • Real Weddings Dallas
  • Real Housewives of Dallas
  • Jan Barboglio
  • Wildflower Arts and Music Festival
  • Hearts for Hounds
  • Okay to Say Dallas
  • Indochino Dallas
  • Old Forester Dallas
  • Dallas Apartment Locators
  • Dallas Summer Musicals
  • PSW Real Estate Dallas
  • Paintzen
  • DTX Dave Perry-Miller
  • DTX Reliant
  • Get in the Spirit
  • Bachendorf's
  • Holiday Wonder
  • Village on the Parkway
  • City Lifestyle
  • opportunity knox villa-o restaurant
  • Nasher Summer Sale
  • Simpson Property Group
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2017 Dallas
  • Carlisle & Vine
  • DTX New Beginnings
  • Get in the Game
  • Red Bull Air Race
  • Dallas DanceFest
  • 2015 Dallas Stylemaker
  • Youth With Faces
  • Energy Ogre
  • DTX Renewable You
  • Galleria Dallas Decadence
  • Bella MD
  • Tractorbeam
  • Young Texans Against Cancer
  • Fresh Start Dallas
  • Dallas Farmers Market
  • Soldier's Angels Dallas
  • Shipt
  • Elite Dental
  • Texas Restaurant Association 2017
  • State Fair 2017
  • Scottish Rite
  • Brooklyn Brewery
  • DTX_Stylemakers
  • Alexan Crossings
  • Ascent Victory Park
  • Top Texans Under 30 Dallas
  • Discover Downtown Dallas
  • San Luis Resort Dallas
  • Greystar The Collection
  • FIG Finale
  • Greystar M Line Tower
  • Lincoln Motor Company
  • The Shelby
  • Jonathan Goldwater Events
  • Windrose Tower
  • Gift Guide 2016
  • State Fair of Texas 2016
  • Choctaw Dallas
  • TodayTix Dallas promoted
  • Whole Foods
  • Unbranded 2014
  • Frisco Square
  • Unbranded 2016
  • Circuit of the Americas 2018
  • The Katy
  • Snap Kitchen
  • Partners Card
  • Omni Hotels Dallas
  • Landmark on Lovers
  • Harwood Herd
  • Galveston.com Dallas
  • Holiday Happenings Dallas 2018
  • TenantBase
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2018
  • Hawkins-Welwood Homes
  • The Inner Circle Dallas
  • Eating in Season Dallas
  • ATTPAC Behind the Curtain
  • TodayTix Dallas
  • The Alexan
  • Toyota Music Factory
  • Nosh Box Eatery
  • Wildflower 2018
  • Society Style Dallas 2018
  • Texas Scottish Rite Hospital 2018
  • 5 Mockingbird
  • 4110 Fairmount
  • Visit Taos
  • Allegro Addison
  • Dallas Tastemakers 2018
  • The Village apartments
  • City of Burleson Dallas

    Restaurant Name Game

    The top 10 contenders for worst restaurant name in Dallas-Fort Worth

    Teresa Gubbins
    Jun 11, 2014 | 10:50 am

    A fun study recently came out showing that you could guess someone's age simply by knowing her name. Most Mildreds are 78. Restaurant names tell a story too. It's not enough anymore to have good food; you need a name with a hook. And just as with people names, there are trends in restaurant names – and horrible mistakes.

    As the industry evolves and restaurants strive to stand out, the name becomes a bigger part of the package, says restaurant consultant Royce Ring of Plan B Group.

    "People are trying to differentiate, and then you have restaurateurs trying to be hip," Ring says. "Sometimes that works, but you have to think about whether it will look outdated five years from now.

    "It's like naming your children or your pets. You don't want something that will be embarrassing later."

    California branding agency Zinzin breaks down the science of restaurant names into categories, such as "descriptive," like Panera Bread, or "invented," like Google. "Experiential" names describe the hoped-for effect, like Smart cars, and "evocative" names make you feel something, like Warby Parker. Evocative names are said to be the best.

    Like everywhere else, Dallas-Fort Worth is in the throes of a restaurant name game, with plenty of contenders for worst name ever. Zinzin founder Jay Jurisich, who's been creating brand names for decades, helps us sift through the subtext.

    FT33, Design District restaurant from chef Matt McCallister. "FT" is said to stand for the restaurant term "fire table."
    "I've never heard that term 'fire table,' but there's already the '33' on a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. Rolling Rock has had the number 33 in quotes on the back of its bottles for years. You have drunk people at bars speculating what it means. There are all these theories, but the company never comes out and explains. So the choice of number here seems to lack originality. And if you're trying to go for mystery, you destroy it when you explain what it is, because the explanation is never as good."

    HG Sply Co., Paleo-centric restaurant on Greenville Avenue
    "These guys have a little bit of the X factor with the missing vowels. They're also right in there on another trend, with their use of 'supply.' It doesn't surprise me that they're Paleo. They're trying to suggest the idea of food being something you have to go out and hunt — the rugged outdoors, none of this froufrou stuff, we're going to go out to the supply company and get real food for real people. It's a fake authentic they're peddling. Ideally, their sign would include the whole word, but with the neon on the vowels burned out. We're so authentic, we don’t even need vowels."

    LYFE Kitchen,healthy chain whose acronymic name stands for "Love Your Food Everyday."
    "LYFE? Any brand that has to explain what it's doing instead of demonstrating it is at risk. Acronyms are cold and off-putting for any company or business. With some of these places, they spell it differently to make it seem hip, but they're really doing it to get a trademark or domain name, like the car service Lyft."

    Method: Caffeination & Fare, indie coffeehouse in East Dallas
    "That's gotta be one of the worst names I've seen. First of all, that Method is just hanging there, with a colon. If it were just called Caffeination and Fare, that would already be one of the worst names — but then preceding it with 'method'? And it's an odd thing to reduce what you serve to a drug, to reduce all of what coffee can be to just 'caffeination.' Imagine if it were a fish place. You could call it 'Briny Omega 3.' And 'fare' is a pretentious word for 'food.' What they're really saying is 'coffee and food.'"

    Oven and Cellar, Italian place coming to downtown Dallas
    "This is what happens when all the single names are already taken! This trend of putting two words together with 'and' started in the Bay area, and it's no surprise. It's for an audience of tech people, where there's a need to be innovative, with a pseudo-scientific focus, with microbiology cooking and mixology. The first ones who had this kind of name did stand out. The problem now is that everyone else is doing it."

    Kessler Park Eating House, Oak Cliff restaurant from owners of Jonathon's Oak Cliff
    "Naming your restaurant after your location is relatively standard. But 'Eating House' is a pretentious attempt to find a different way to say 'restaurant.' I hate to think of what alternative term they'd come up with for their bathrooms. You said there was already a place called JoJo's Eating House that closed? I wonder why. Was it shut down after it ate too many people?

    "This begs for a funny video on YouTube, where you have a voiceover saying, 'We serve fresh, locally grown, artisanal, gluten-free' and there are songbirds, and a pedestrian walks in front of the place and the 'eating house' opens up like a mouth with sharp teeth and devours the person."

    S&M Eats, taco shack next to Grapevine Bar
    "Not terrible, but trying too hard to stand out with the fake brand positioning of hip and edgy. I imagine menu items with cute names like 'Grovel Fries' and 'Whip Me Shakes.' The classier route will be to pretend they don't know what it really stands for. I'm surprised they didn't go with S&M Eathouse."

    Angry Dwarf Saloon, Expo Park bar about to get a revamp from restaurateur Peter Tarantino
    "Actually, I don't mind this. It's not politically correct; someone could say it sounds derogatory. It's possibly insensitive, but at least it's evocative. It's memorable. You can get away with almost anything for a bar. It's harder to name a bar because every type of name has been done. It's harder to be outrageous."

    AF + B, Tristan Simon's "American Food and Beverage" restaurant in Fort Worth
    "The plus sign is this year's newer, hipper ampersand. People already tend to abbreviate restaurant names, so I don't know how you would abbreviate this place, or how good you would feel saying it to your friends. 'Let's go to AF and B.' It would be difficult to find online.

    "Without even seeing the menu, you get the sense that they're trying for authenticity and purity. Real food and hard alcohol, but not your grandfather's pot roast and Schaefer beer. It probably has mixology drinks and farm-to-table ingredients, and you can tell all this because it has the plus."

    So & So's, bar-restaurant in old Primo's space from Sfuzzi team
    "It has the ampersand, last year's plus sign, and that's sad, but there's another trend in bars where you ironically use the kind of name that would have been used unironically back in the '50s. So you create a dive bar where all the people you're stepping over to get inside were in that bar back in the '50s and '60s. Now it has a similar name but with a nicer interior and one of those standup shuffleboard lanes and a TV in the corner playing pseudo porn from Mongolia."

    AF+B has real food and a plus-sign in its name.

    AF+B
      
    Photo courtesy of AF+B
    AF+B has real food and a plus-sign in its name.
    unspecified
    news/restaurants-bars
    CULTUREMAP EMAILS ARE AWESOME
    Get Dallas intel delivered daily.

    Stir Fry News

    Mom-and-pop Asian chain from Austin makes Dallas debut in McKinney

    Raven Jordan
    May 12, 2025 | 6:40 pm
    Fire Bowl
    Fire Bowl
    Fire Bowl

    A small Asian chain from Austin has entered the Dallas market: Called Fire Bowl Cafe, it's a small chain that has opened its first DFW location in McKinney, at 4060 W. University Dr. #300, in a new shopping center west of US-75.

    Fire Bowl Cafe was founded by husband-and-wife Gigi Lee and Daniel Pao in 1996 with a focus on customizable bowls prepared in sizzling woks. They have four locations in Austin and one in Colorado.

    Bringing the concept to McKinney is Dallas-based hospitality group DLC Restaurant Holdings (Firo Pizza, Craft Pies Pizza, Desperados), according to a release.

    “We are thrilled to bring Fire Bowl Café to McKinney and introduce our unique dining experience to the wonderful community here,” says CEO Mike Daniel in a statement. “Our mission is to ensure that every customer leaves satisfied and happy, and we can’t wait to share our passion for fresh, customizable Asian cuisine with our new neighbors in North Texas."

    To give it local flavor, they've partnered with Julian Rodarte, who co-founded Beto & Son, the Mexican restaurant at Trinity Groves in west Dallas, and also served as Trinity Groves' CEO. He was briefly executive chef at COSM at Grandscape and is currently culinary director for Dee Lincoln Concepts.

    The menu has a Pei-Wei vibe, featuring a mashup of Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines, with favorites like edamame, spring rolls, crab rangoon, pad Thai, pot stickers, and lettuce wraps.

    There are noodle and rice bowls, topped with vegetables and choice of protein; and a make-it-your-way stir-fry where you choose from proteins like chicken, beef, shrimp, or tofu, tossed in a wok with vegetables, then combine it with your choice of "carb" — noodles, brown or white rice — and a wide selection of sauces, from teriyaki to spicy peanut to classic Chinese.

    Prices are $12-$14. They do not currently serve alcohol, but have plans for it at a future date.

    openings
    news/restaurants-bars
    Loading...