Restaurants To Avoid -- A BakerMuse Culinary Guide
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 08:42PM 
According to the experts there are approximately 9,000 taste buds on the human tongue. That's 9,000 culinary critics just waiting to give a review of your mother in law's e-coli enhanced sea bass casserole. Well, here at the BakerMuse we want to help save both your taste buds and your time. So here is our annual Restaurants to Avoid Blog.
Avoid any restaurants where the mascot is the food you're eating. Usually, it is a overly large smiling pig wearing a puffy chef's hat and an apron. He's brandishing a BBQ instrument of some kind -- eager to thrust it into his brethren. This is the kind pig that was picked on in the sty. These are we call the Cannibals R Us franchises.
Avoid any restaurants that uses the N' word. These are the kind of eateries that aren't sure what's going to sell better. So they strategically place the 'n right in the middle. They have names like Steak n' Brew, Hog n' Grog or Sardine n' Mercury.
Avoid any restaurants that look like a garage sale. Would you clear out the center of your garage, sop up the oil drip and put a table in the center and serve dinner? Of course not. But some restaurants plaster their walls with things you'd find at your local landfill -- the faux sled from Citizen Kane, badly-framed posters of straight-to-video movies like "The Olsen Twins Gone to Paris" and orange prison wear.
Avoid any restaurants that involve impossible partnerships. These franchises typically have sister restaurants in Mexico. Places with names like Pancho & Wongs or Habib O'Toole's. Yeah, I'll have the Corn Beef & Cabbage Falafel to go.
Avoid any restaurants with a celebrity connection. Upscale bistros like Ed Begley Jr's House of Hummus or Gary Coleman's Shrimpfest.
Avoid any restaurants with an overly cute nautical theme. Like Squid Row. Or the Rusty Scupper. Generally, these places find a rotting ship somehere -- dismantle it and stuff it into fish netting on the ceiling. The farther from the actual ocean -- the worst the restaurant. Fresh salmon in Nebraska? I don't think so.
Avoid any restaurants that uses a weird mammal theme. Places with names like the Sensuous Skunk or the Lactating Lemur.
Avoid any restaurants that are needlessly hip. These place are so cool they don't even have plates. Or even waiters. You pay for just showing up. Restaurants of this ilk are usually are named after the periodic table of elements -- like Boron or Zinc.
Avoid any restaurants that pretend to be from the middle ages. Anything that has "Ye Olde" in the name is bound to have a modern conglomerate behind it. Like the Ye Olde Legume House or worse, Ye Olde Mutton Mansion. Typically the logo includes a graphic of a morbidly obese smiling Monk as the mascot. How about a vow of fasting?
Avoid any restaurants that are supposedly in the Guiness Book of Records. It's usually a simple name like "Irving's" followed by "Home of the world's largest bratwurst." If you eat one -- your picture goes on a giant wall of other "winners." Oddly enough, it's the same group that's on the heart bypass waiting list.
Avoid any restaurant that has their elevation in their name. You can go to Jacques, but not Upstairs at Jacques. That little trip up the stairs will cost you an extra $25. And if the restaurant is on the top of a building, you might as well just hand over your wallet to the Maitre d.
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Reader Comments (3)
You may want to avoid 90% of the restaurants in the Microplex (Bryan/College Station). We don't have anything that might be deemed "trendy" or "hip." And let's add one more: Avoid any restaurant that serves your food on a sheet of butcher paper.
If I ever find myself in College Station at the Microplex, I will avoid the butcher paper. Thank you.
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