Listen up future restauranteurs and those who would name restaurants: Using the word “Urban” to name your eating establishment is now officially overdone. That is to say: If your first name ain't Keith and you're not a country music star looking to open a rib joint, you might as well as try to come up with something more original than “Urban BBQ”.
Here's proof.
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In Orange County and Long Beach alone there's already an Urban Plates, an Urban Table, two Urban Seouls, an Urban Cactus, an Urban Grill, a Tempo Urban Kitchen, and the inexplicable Urban Location, which is inexplicable because it's actually a boba shop (maybe “Urban Boba” was taken?).
And I've not begin to count the other “Urban” eateries in the counties that surround us, nor am I counting the non-food-related businesses using the word “Urban”. And, oh yeah, if any Asian restaurant entrepreneur was eyeing “Urban Chopsticks”, you're too late: a joint in Bellflower already claimed it.
On the bright side, “Metro” and “City” are wide open. So is “Municipal”. Oh wouldn't I love to see what a restaurant called “Municipal Kitchen” would serve!
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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.