Name Your Own Chinese Restaurant Contest!

I have been inspired to create a “Name Your Own Chinese Restaurant” contest.

You are invited to submit ideas for Chinese restaurant names as comments here on the blog or to michaelgury@msn.com.

What got me going was that friend and former colleague, Ken Allen, posted a link to this, http://wapo.st/1TcqhU4 , a recent Washington Post article on the topic of Chinese restaurant names.

It seems that a couple of journalists decided to search all the Chinese restaurant names in America via Yelp.  Why they decided to do this might have to do with some kind of lunch as well as extreme boredom with the American presidential election.  I can only speculate.

But they certainly did their homework.  The article is equipped with maps and graphics! What is most inspiring is the “taxonomy cloud” of names, meaning the words that frequently appear in the 14,000 current Chinese restaurant names that are searchable. 

I’m not sure that any of these words will surprise you if you are a connoisseur of Chinese food in America.

Just to kick things off, my own off-the-cuff contributions consist of:

Gang-of-Four Tasty Wah

Chairman Mao Lucky Gourmet

Imperial Chopstick Tiananmen Dumpling

Bamboo Hot Panda

Mr Hing Fu Dynasty

Mongolian Green Seafood

Canton Ohio Hunan Tasty Wei Not

Chang's Happy Noodle Shower

Lucky Dong Chinese Roast

Szechuan Wah Coal Tasty

Chen's Royal Chop Fortune Lucky

Shanghai Tokyo Whatever

Jimmy Wok Jin Wah Not

Bok Choy and Dog (Pub)

Little Mongolian Hot Surprise

Kwok’s Noh Wok

Ming Hibachi Express and Dry Cleaning

Ergo Sum Dim

House of Communism and Fu Moon Noodles

Tasty Lee's Imperial Pinky

Fang’s Chattanooga Happy House and Stir Fry

Trump Good Fortune Hibachi and Club House

 

The winner will receive a free dinner at Placencia Belize’s famous Maya Beach Chinese restaurant, whose own current name is “Chinese Open”, unless it’s closed, in which case it is also called “Chinese Open”.  The food isn’t bad.  Bring your own table cloth.  And chopsticks.  OK, if you win, I’ll bring them.  If you need them.  I mean the chopsticks.

The deadline is May 25, 2016, so get cracking!  The winner will be announced on June 1, 2016, on this blog.  Have fun!