Pun for their money

So, you want to open a restaurant? Can't be too hard. Cook food, maintain hygiene, be nice, take cash. But how to entice people to your establishment?

If multiplatform marketing is beyond your budget and word-of-mouth has yet to take effect, there's always your eatery's name. There are thousands of books out there guiding parents on how to name their progeny, but the restaurant-naming game is another science altogether.

In his book Pu Pu Hot Pot, Ben Brusey says, with tongue placed in kebab-filled cheek, that creativity in a restaurant's name is far more important than that on its plates. ''For too long, restaurants have been judged on the quality of their food. In some parts of the world, chefs have been known to waste literally hours of their lives carefully preparing and cooking stuff, only for other people to eat it and, later, part ways with it. This insanity must stop.''

Brusey's book, comprising substandard photographs and superfluous commentary, survives on the strength of one joke. But it is a joke that can be sustained for 200 pages, as it takes as many forms as there are places to eat. There are the good (Marquis de Salade in Budapest, Hungary), the bad (the Jason Donervan cart selling kebabs to ''neighbours'' across Britain), the lost in translation (Little Drooling Bear Food in Shanghai, China) and the just plain wrong (Booty's House of Crabs in Ocean City, New Jersey).

Most entries are of the play-on-words variety, whether intentional (New Cod on the Block in Sheffield, Britain) or not so much (Phat Phuc Noodle Bar in London). It translates as Happy Buddha, but still.

Australian establishments get a guernsey in Pu Pu Hot Pot's pages, with the focus on a certain pun-prone cuisine prevalent in Sydney: Thai the Knot (Maroubra), N'Thai Sing (Terrigal), Thairanosaurus (Riverwood). The only non-Thai entry from Australia is Melbourne's Lord of the Fries (various locations).

Because it doesn't fit into Pu Pu Hot Pot's cheery, cheeky or bodily function focus, there are no examples in the book of the latest naming trend hitting Australian eateries. More and more establishments have drawn from the poetic, the personal and the abstract to stand out from the crowd. Witness establishments in Melbourne with names like Moon Under Water (named after George Orwell's ideal, fictitious pub), My Legendary Girlfriend (a song by Pulp), Annoying Brother (the self-deprecating proprietor, who is the youngest of six), Bread and Jam for Frances (a children's book; appropriate as it is housed in Readings bookstore) and Omar and the Marvellous Coffee Bird (after a folkloric tale of the origin of coffee - visit the cafe to learn more). Some names sound like a secret club where members wear fez (League of Honest Coffee), while others are so stripped back they have all the charm of a tax form entry (PM24).

The Sydney-based director of RT Hospitality Solutions, Toni Clarke, says that in the past, an establishment's name conveyed something about its style, cuisine, location or owner's name. ''Many Australian restaurateurs looked to the USA and dining guides such as Zagat to find a name. Now, in Sydney, it seems, anything goes.''

The current trends in Sydney are to use street numbers (10 William Street, Bar 100), the owner's name (Kitchen by Mike), or something completely off the wall (Beautiful Strange, Ching-a-Lings). Few Sydney restaurateurs share the American and British passion for puns, she says.

Australia's predilection for in-jokes, obscure references and personal pitches didn't make it into the pages of Pu Pu Hot Pot. But there is some crossover between the restaurants that feature in the book and the latest local names. Melbourne cafe Arthur Radley is named for the lawyer character created by Harper Lee, whose novel also provides the inspiration for a New Jersey bar that appears in Pu Pu Hot Pot, Tequila Mockingbird.

Despite Busey's claim, whether an eatery's name is memorable because it's funny-ha-ha, funny-strange, lyrical or obscure matters far less than the food on the plate. This is evinced by a Budapest business in Brusey's book that continues to trade: Fatal Restaurant.

More from the menu of silly names

A Salt and Battery New York

Abrakebabra Dublin, Ireland

Amy's Winehouse Sunderland, Britain

Bean Curd Person of High Skill Huwei, Taiwan

Coffee Annan Trondheim, Norway

Frying Nemo Goole, Britain

Korean Offhand Porridge Restaurant Busan, South Korea

Man Bites Dog Austin, Texas

Pita Pan New York, New York

Sherrill's Eat Here and Get Gas Tipton, Indiana

Stomach Clinic Bar and Restaurant Nairobi, Kenya

Syriandipity Toronto, Canada

The Fish Wants the Sauce to Eat Taipei, Taiwan

YacDonalds Kagbeni, Nepal

Pu Pu Hot Pot: The World's Best Restaurant Names, by Ben Brusey (Penguin, October 2012, $20).

Patrick Witton is a Melbourne-based freelance writer.