Groan if you must. Go ahead, take a few cheap shots in the comment section. You know you want to. Anyone for “Dude, Where's the Pepto?” or some meaner variant of that?
But to me, the name owner Rohit Walia picked for his Indian restaurant in the quiet suburban sprawl of Lake Forest's Foothill Ranch neighborhood is brilliant in the same way that Pho King Way is brilliant. When you're in a crowded market and what you're selling is practically a commodity, the worst thing to do is to pick an off-the-shelf name that sounds like everyone else's. So why not repurpose Ashton Kutcher's low-brow comedy for a chuckle if it will bring them in.
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Dude, Where's My Curry? is, judging by the online menu, a fast-casual where you pick your rice (from three kinds) and naan (from two kinds), then how many curries you want from a choice of eight. Simple.
There's everyone's favorite: chicken tikka masala, which is, of course more British than Indian. But then they also offer a North Indian lamb curry called rogan josh and plenty of vegetarian options for observant Hindus.
And dude, it just opened last week.
2714 Portola Parkway, Foothill Ranch, CA 92610, 949-371-8957; http://www.dudewheresmycurry.com
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.