The Figs and Olives Flowchart: Fun with Restaurant Nomenclature

As it is with the process of naming most anything of significance (dogs, babies, planets), trying to figure out what to call your restaurant can be difficult. You can do as some pet owners do and be as broad as possible (i.e., for every cat named Kitty, there's an eatery named Food). You can sort of pay tribute to an animal while possibly insulting your customers.

Or, you can try for what Jay Rayner termed “the ingredient-led approach” and call your place something that directly or indirectly recalls a specific food. This seems to be the path often taken by several places in town, with figs and olives in particular being very popular motivating conceits: It would be perfectly understandable, for example, if someone told you to meet them at Fig & Olive and you thought you heard Olive & Thyme. Or, worse, went Downtown and looked for them at some restaurant somewhere between Figueroa and Olive. To avoid similar confusing misadventures, and to help you generally distinguish one restaurant from the other, this flowchart may come in handy. It'll be especially useful if you know whether you're looking for a fig or an olive in the restaurant's signage. Turn the page.

Credit: T. Nguyen

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