CHUCK-A-RAMA UPDATE

An apology has been issued in the tragic Chuck-a-Rama incident.

(Thanks to Octavia Sawyer)

Comments

[Garret]

Let this be a lesson to restaurant owners everywhere. DO NOT mess with crazed meat-eating Atkins dieters.

"We're here. We eat meat. Deal with it!"

[The Bob]

Does anyone besides me think that a company that names a restaurant "Chuck-a-rama" (which conjures up images just the reverse of eating!) deserves any bad press that they get?

Could you actually enjoy a meal at "Chuck-a-rama".... would you actually walk in the door??????

[harry P]

I notice the gentleman's name is "Sui" - is that prounced "Sooooooo-ey!!"?

I had the same thought about the "Chuck-a-rama" name - "All you can spew".

There was a restaurant in Oklahoma City in the 40's (according to my parents) called "Squat and Gobble". I notice there is one of the same name in San Francisco today (not that there's anything wrong with that)

Harry P

[Graz]

Looks like their angling for more than an "unspecified number of free meals".

Perhaps an entire cow?

[cheese_ball839]

Restaurants are darned if you do, darned if you don't. Serve people too much food and they sue you for making them fat. Cut them off, and they sue you for discriminating against them because they are fat.

It's a no win situation.

Fatties should just shut their pie hole and thank God that the nice people at Chuck-O-Rama (is that not the WORST name for a restaurant you have ever heard?) kept them from eating another side of cow, meaning they will put off the inevitable heart attack that much longer...

[mudstuffin]

OK, we've got "Chuck-O-Rama" and "Squat and Gobble" in the top ten worst restaurant names category, I'll nominate "Skog's" which actually existed outside Columbus and sounds like Klingon restaurant. That's three. Other nominations?

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

Those folks need to give up Chuck-O-Rama. Next thing you know they'll be gnawing on the upholstery. I went into one of those buffet cafeteria places once, really depressing experience.

[The Bob]

Bad restaurant names: I'll enter "The Bloated Goat" (in keeping with another of today's blog entries)... in Fowlerville, MI. This one always makes me think of something that has died and laid in the sun too long!

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

Why eat out when you can have the same thing at home?

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

There is a trendy café in Paris called "le Drug Store." Not to be outdone, there is another restaurant called "Drug Burger."

[MOTW]

I thought we'd already hashed this one to death at the first posting. Seems like this company is bending over backwards for some very easily offended folk. Get over it! Get a life! Go eat somewhere else! Get Mahatma's cookbook!

[Christobol]

I nominate "The really very shitty food place"

as a bad restaurant name.

Oh, were we talking about real places?

[Eykis]

The Pickle Wig - Clarksville, Tennessee

Oh, you can bet a big lawsuit is brewing.

[Eykis]

BTW: Clarksville, Tennessee is also the same town as Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, Home of the 101st Air Assault! (oooohhhhaaaa) Ft. Campbell has a restaurant called: The Rod and Gun Club -- which I think is rather cool, plus superb German food!

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

And how many times have you seen "hunan restaurant" and thought it was something else?

[JCT]

I echo this, Alex: "I think now is the time for them to realize that they're not on a diet if they eat that much food."

Will common sense ever prevail in this country?

[Garret]

Don't worry. The low-carb backlash is coming.

Just like the low-fat craze before it, companies are jumping on the low-carb bandwagon. Bread, cookies, brownies ... all claiming to be low-carb. Sure they are. Instead of 50 carbs, they have 35! Plus they're loaded with fat.

People think they can eat all of it they want. Then they wonder, "Why didn't I lose weight?"

The question is, what food ingredient can we next eliminate in order to lose weight?

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

Speakin of Chinese, my favorite restaurant in NYC is the Peking Duck

"We prepare well in advance. Firstly air is pumped into the duck to stretch and loosen the skin, then boiling water is repeatedly spread over the bird, which is then carefully dried, the dried skin is rubbed all over with maltose"

Well, it tastes better than it sounds.

[Zoegirl]

The Pro Common Sense guy is looking for "hot babes on the internet" by posting "a bitching column" with no way to respond.

Interesting approach. :)

[BMX3]

If you want to find a unusual name for a restaurant search oriental/chinese restaurants.
Say one called "Sum Dung". Obviously something was lost in the translation. I'm sure there's more out there.

[BMX3]

Saw one, I saw one called "Sum Dung". I also saw one in the 'net once called "Fu King Chinese Restaurant".

[evil little pixie]

From "The Pima Paradox" by Malcolm Gladwell, discussing the "Zone" diet made up by Barry Sears, which is pretty much the same as the Atkins Diet:
What Sears would have us believe is that when it comes to weight loss your body treats some kinds of calories differently from others- that the combination of the food we we eat is more critical than the amount. To this end, he cites what he calls "amazing" and "landmark" study published in 1956 in the British medical journal _Lancet_. (It should be a tipoff that the best corroborating research he can come up with here is more than 40 years old.) In the study, a couple of researchers compared the effects of two different thousand-calorie diets- the first high in fat and protein and low in carbohydrates, and the second low in fat and protein and high in carbohydrates- on two groups of obese men. After eight to ten days, the men on the low-carbohydrate diet had lost more weight than the men on the high-carbohydrate diet. Sears concludes from this that if you want to lose weight you should eat protein and shun carbohydrates. Actually, it shows nothing of the sort. Carbohydrates promote water retention; protein acts like a diuretic. Over a week or so, someone on a high-protein diet will always look better than someone on a high-carbohydrate diet, simply because of dehydration. When a similar study was conducted several years later, researchers found that after about three weeks- when the effects of dehydration had evened out- the weight loss on the two diets was virtually identicle. The key isn't how you eat, in other words; it's how much you eat. Calories, not carbohydrates, are still what matters. The dirty little secret of the Zone system is that, despite Sears's expostulations about insulin, all he has done is come up with another low-calorie diet. He doesn't do the math for his readers, but some nutritionists have calculated that if you follow Sears's perscriptions religiously you'll take in at most seventeen hundred calories a day, and at seventeen hundred calories virtually anyone can lose weight."

[evil little pixie]

If you give up carbs, for the first couple weeks you look better because all that protein dehaydrates you, but by the fourth week it all evens out and you lose the same amount of weight as someone on a high-carb diet who's eating the same number of calories as you are. Low-carb diets only work if you eat fewer calories than you used to, and you could get the same effect by giving up an equal caloric amount of non-carbs.

[evil little pixie]

Or, for the Cliff Cliff Notes:
You lose weight when you expend more calories than you eat. CALORIES matter; carbs don't.

[evil little pixie]

So if you skip the toast at breakfast, the hotdog bun at lunch, the chips at mid-afternoon, and the rice at dinner, AND DON'T REPLACE THEM WITH ANYTHING, you're taking in fewer calories, which means weight loss (or at least slower gain), especially if you exercise. But if you ate the same carbs you normally ate, and instead you skipped the egg at breakfast, the chili on the hotdog, the beef jerky at mid-afternoon, and half the porkchop at dinner, and didn't replace them with anything, you'd still lose weight, especially if you exercised.

[evil little pixie]

Ok, end of lecture. Sorry everyone; I just took the final in my Food and Culture class, which included some stuff on fad diets like Atkins.

[eadn]

evil little pixie, You're Beautiful! :-) Essay length and even in the Cliff Notes!

I definitely agree on the calories and have personally noted that saliva digests carbs, the stomach digests protein, the gall bladder / small intestine digests fats. So passing through, we get a hit of carb-energy, building block-proteins for repairs, and maintenance-fats plus extra stored energy. That is a wholly simplistic analysis of my understanding of biology and digestion and I ain't givin' up my beer!

(P.S. for those of you who have a more detailed understanding of physiology, please note the phrase "wholly simplistic". Just don't want to go into all the detail, though bio-physio-medical info is one of my hobbies. Thanks! ;-)

[eadn]

P.S. evil little pixie, Thanks for my own "ya gotta learn something new everyday"! :-) I didn't know protein dehydrated one.

Semi off-topic, but we all know sugar can give you a buzz, fats can make you logy, but a long time ago when I ate like a pig, I also found that a lot of protein can give me a real cozy self-satisfied feeling. Maybe that last is just me...just a weirdness I thought I'd toss out! :-)

[evil little pixie]

Thanks, eadn! I'm always glad to help "educate" you. Or is it the other way around? And I'm always glad to give Alex alternatives to going blind. ;-)

[kj]

Real restaurant name: "Dog 'n Suds," with a picture of a soapy pooch on the sign.

eadn: I grew up on grass-fed beef, and I agree: nothing like a nice T-bone to make you feel all's right with the world.