With Pho King, Pho Kim and Crapitto's closed, what restaurants are there left in Houston to ridicule?

Plenty, it turns out.

The conversation at a recent media dinner turned to bad restaurant names when we started discussing the current contender for worst moniker: TABLE. Only a few of us had been and reported the food to be pretty good, but...that name. We pictured the chefs, owners and marketing team sitting in the restaurant hurriedly trying to come up with a designation to replace Philippe now that Philippe Schmidt was no longer a part of the restaurant.

Then, we imagine, one of them looked down at the platform around which they were seated.

"Knife? No, that sounds violent. Napkin? No, too close to the Britishism for diaper. I've got it! TABLE. But in all caps. It looks fancier that way. It tells diners nothing about the food or concept, but it lets them know that this is definitely a restaurant. Or a furniture store. Whatever, let's just call the damn thing TABLE."

OK, so there was probably a little more thought in it than that. And just to be clear, the fact that we think the name is, well, dumb, does not reflect in any way our opinions of the food or the restaurant itself. That's true of all the restaurants on this list. They try hard and are quality establishments.

But damn, some of these names are bad.

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