Restaurant Red Flags

Stolen ideas, terrible naming, lounges, and plenty of other things – in this piece, I’ve gathered the kinds of restaurants I will never, under any circumstances, visit for the purpose of writing a review.

Stealing Ideas

Inspiration is normal. Borrowing and adapting certain elements or ideas is perfectly acceptable too (let’s be honest: almost no project today exists without it).

What I can’t stand is outright copying something 1:1.

There was one case where I only did the research after visiting a place and was so stunned by what I found that I ended up dedicating a couple of paragraphs to it in the review (hello, Baken Bar and the merciless copy-paste of Autopoul).

Going forward, I’d rather not help promote places built on that kind of approach. Although, to be fair, sometimes those stories need to be discussed publicly and loudly.

Naming

A restaurant’s name is a funny thing. Whether consciously or not, it often reflects both the level of the owner and the audience they’re trying to attract.

Some jokes and names strike me as genuinely brilliant (hello, Antresolec, with its giant antresola on Solec Street).

Others are so painfully bad that I don’t just avoid going inside – I’m nervous walking past them.

Among the more spectacular examples are the magnificently awful Leonardo Daj Winko and ShawaHub, a shawarma place whose logo copies Pornhub and whose menu includes items called Frit Ass and Fidelity.

Lounges

Historically, I’ve always stayed away from places with the word «Lounge» attached to their name.

They have their own vibe and their own audience – one that simply isn’t for me.

Older men smoking hookah, women hunting for older men smoking hookah, gold leaf on food, and enough artificial prestige to power a small city.

What I especially love is the self-important positioning.

«The longest lounge restaurant in Eastern Europe»

There seems to be an entirely separate championship happening in that category.

AI-Generated Food Photography

Using AI before opening a restaurant to convey a mood or a rough concept? Fine, maybe.

Using AI-generated images as menu photos once the restaurant is already operating is one giant red flag and a profound sign of disrespect – both towards guests and towards your own chef.

And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a restaurant people physically visit or a delivery service trying to show what its khachapuri adjaruli supposedly looks like.

If you want guests to respect you enough to place an order, respect them first.

Disrespecting Guests

The way a restaurant behaves online is also a fantastic indicator.

Positioning, a coherent visual identity, great food photography – all of that is wonderful.

But whenever someone decides that the future lies in viral videos, things often descend into such spectacular second-hand embarrassment that you can never quite unsee it.

And for some reason, it almost always ends up revolving around mocking guests.

All those skits where someone in a café reminds the barista that they ordered a lactose-free cappuccino and gets told, «Then that’s not your cappuccino – go sit down and calm yourself»; making fun of dietary restrictions and food preferences; things like that.

That’s not just tacky – it actively makes me not want to visit the place.

The Chef or Owner Is an Asshole

For me, people will always matter more than food.

Even the most brilliant dishes become irrelevant if they’re being served in a place where, for example, employees haven’t been paid for three months.

That’s not a business I can support, and not one I want to contribute to.

Admittedly, this is the most difficult and subjective category of them all – because I genuinely believe people are innocent until proven otherwise.

But when there are widespread complaints from staff or well-documented cases of misconduct, I generally try to stay away.

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