A List of Chain Restaurants Whose Names Contain Unusual Structures

Obviously, words like “restaurant” or “grill” do not qualify as unusual.

Wednesday, March 18th, 2026

A list of chain restaurants whose names contain unusual structures, presented in decreasing order of how appealing it would be to eat in such a structure:

  • Castle (as in White Castle): A meal fit for a king! Apparently, “Fit for a king” was actually the slogan of Royal Castle, a White Castle knock-off that has been almost defunct for decades.

  • Villa (as in Taco Villa): A villa isn’t quite a castle, but it’s still a very fancy place to eat.

  • House (as in Waffle House and International House of Pancakes): Two different breakfast chains using “house” in their name is strange, but eating in a house is certainly normal enough.

  • Roadhouse (as in Texas Roadhouse): A roadhouse has always been a place where you could eat a meal, so this is fine too. I’m quite tickled at the idea of asking for a room for the night at Texas Roadhouse though.

  • Cabana (as in Taco Cabana): If I’m in a cabana, I think I’d prefer a tropical beverage over a meal, but it’ll do.

  • Hut (as in Pizza Hut): A hut is basically just a cabana that’s not near the beach. It’s not a particular appealing place to eat a meal, even if it’s a Classic.

  • Shack (as in Shake Shack and Harold’s Chicken Shack): To me, a shack seems worse than a hut. It just sounds dirtier.

  • Factory (as in Cheesecake Factory and The Old Spaghetti Factory): Unless it’s cranking out computer chips, a factory is liable to be grimy and unclean. Must it really be old, too?

  • Warehouse (as in Spaghetti Warehouse): Two different spaghetti-focused chains with weird buildings in their names! This was initially my pick for least appetizing place to eat, but I found worse.

  • Corral (as in Golden Corral): Don’t eat the cow pies.

  • Pit (as in Pita Pit and Buca di Beppo, which translates to “Beppo’s Pit”): A pit is pretty much just a hole in the ground, with some bracing that qualifies it as a structure. Surely this is the worst place to sit down for a meal.

Happy Evacuation Day Semiquincentennial ∞

In 50 years, I plan to be celebrating the tercentennial too.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2026

250 years ago today, more then 11,000 British troops fled Boston on what has come to be known as Evacuation Day. Today, you’d better believe my towniest pal Mat and I will be celebrating this important early Revolutionary War victory.

Makin’ It Retro ∞

Red-checkered tablecloths are obviously a must as well.

Monday, March 16th, 2026

Growing up, my family used to drive many hours to visit relatives. As a child affected with car sickness, I couldn’t pass the time by reading. As a result, those trips felt painfully long. One upside, however, was that we would often stop at Pizza Hut for lunch. The chain offered a lunch deal where your personal pan pizza had to arrive within five minutes, or your next one would be free.1

They even created a custom timer for it, which you can purchase on eBay if you’ve got 300 dollars and no sense:

A Pizza Hut-branded timer

I seem to recall some shenanigans with when exactly the timer arrived at the table, but regardless, they aimed to deliver your food fast and hot. Better still, watching those seconds tick down gave my brother and me something to be entertained by as we waited to eat.2

I don’t know if we ever scored a free pizza. As kids, we certainly weren’t paying anyway. Nevertheless, the hope of beating Pizza Hut sprang eternal all the same.

As an adult, however, the restaurant has not been a part of my life. They’ve shifted to a focus on take-out and delivery, and I’ve shifted to eating higher-end pizza. I don’t think I’ve been to a Pizza Hut in at least a decade, and probably much longer.

Apparently, the chain is seeking to lure folks like me back in, with an astounding “Pizza Hut Classic” concept. These restaurants are throwbacks to the Pizza Hut of my childhood.

The interior design and menu had been painstakingly engineered to replicate the Pizza Huts of the 1980s and ’90s, when families and friends settled into red-vinyl booths on a Friday night to eat deep-dish pan pizza and drink Pepsi from red plastic cups.

If I ever find myself near a Pizza Hut Classic, you can bet I’m going to book it right on in to chow down on some acceptable pizza while drinking soda from a red plastic cup.

Footnotes:

  1. The oh-so-’80s ad is archived here. ↩︎

  2. I would be remiss if I failed to note that when my dad joined us on these road trips, we couldn’t participate in this deal. While my mother, brother, and I would always order a personal pan pizza, my dad had a love for Pizza Hut’s spaghetti bolognese. Ordering that meant our whole table was ineligible for the 5 minute pizza deal. I’m still working on forgiving him. ↩︎

Rampant Cheating in Camel Beauty Contests ∞

Is nothing sacred?

Friday, March 13th, 2026

Ski jumpers aren’t the only ones making illicit use of hyaluronic acid. Grotesque body modifications have now come to camels.

The article on this scandal states “Camel beauty contests in the Gulf aren’t a silly novelty event”, and I suppose that fact that there’s real money involved makes that true. Nevertheless, they’re definitely still ridiculous, and now they’re more ridiculous than ever.

Bam Adebayo and the Wrong Ben Wallace

Winner gets to keep the nickname “Big Ben”.

Thursday, March 12th, 2026

On Tuesday night, Bam Adebayo dropped 83 points on the hapless Washington Generals Wizards. That’s the second-highest single-game total of all time, behind only Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 100 point game, and topping Kobe Bryant’s 81 points from 2006.

Bam also topped Kobe in another way. After Wilt put up his 100, he posed with a ridiculously low-rent “sign”:

Wilt Chamberlain holding a piece of paper with “100” written on it.[Wikipedia]

As far as I can find, Kobe Bryant did not recreate this image after his monster game. Bam Adebayo, on the other hand, did:

Bam Adebayo holding a piece of paper with “83” written on it.[Photo via @miamiheat]

I think they used a Sharpie instead of a grease pencil, but it’ll do.

As I read about Tuesday’s game, I saw that Bam scored 36 of his points from the free throw line, on 43 attempts. That’s 83.7%, and I wanted to know how that ranks in the NBA. Against all judgement, but also because the button is right there on my phone, I asked Siri “What’s a good free throw shooting percentage in the NBA?”. Please have a look at the absolutely wretched answer it provided:

Q: “What’s a good free-throw shooting percentage in the NBA” A: Ben Wallace has the worse free-throw shooting percentage in the NBA history, at 41.4%.”.

That is not the answer to the question asked.1 It also contains strange grammar, with the phrase “in the NBA history”. And most amusingly, it features a picture of the wrong Ben Wallace.

This is yet another pathetic showing by Siri, but it did have one upside. It’s led me to a new dream. I don’t know how we make it happen, but I’d love to see these two Bens Wallace go head-to-head in a free throw shooting contest.

Footnotes:

  1. The correct answer is that roughly 80% or higher is good, and 85-90% is elite. Bam’s 83.7% was thus quite respectable, particularly for a center. ↩︎

The Ig Nobels Are Moving to Europe ∞

I’m so tired of winning.

Wednesday, March 11th, 2026

Last year, I covered the 2025 edition of the Ig Nobel prizes. Since 1991, a ceremony has been held annually in the Boston area, and I was lucky enough to attend in 2011. Sadly, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to repeat that in 2026, as the Ig Nobel ceremony is moving out of America.

The shift from the US to Europe is due to concerns about the political situation and attendees getting visas, organisers said on Monday.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country [US],” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, told the Associated Press in an email interview.

“We cannot, in good conscience, ask the new laureates, or the international journalists covering the event, to travel to the United States this year,” said Abrahams.

Who can blame them?

Drinking Dessert Ranch

Available for a not nearly limited enough time

Tuesday, March 10th, 2026

It’s apparently National Ranch Day, a celebration of one of America’s lesser culinary contributions. Should you find yourself at a Great Wolf Lodge today, you can plunk down just $3.10 to partake of this:

A ranch milkshake. Barvd.
[Photo credit: Great Wolf Lodge]

What you’re looking at is a “milkshake” containing some combination of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and ranch dressing. As far as I can determine, news of this abomination was first revealed near the end of a mid-February press release, which described it thusly:

Ranch Milkshake: A sweet-and-tangy vanilla ranch shake topped with fried chicken, carrots and celery, and finished with a sweet-and-salty lime rim and whipped cream.

They just tossed that in a list of four limited-time food and drink offerings alongside a burger and a brownie, as if a ranch milkshake is the most normal thing in the world.

It’s available through April 26 (for a regular price of $7.99). I’ve found that there’s a Great Wolf Lodge about an hour west of Boston, but I do not intend to visit. If you do, please let me know how it is.

Previously in Ridiculous Foods Made Primarily to Go Viral: Everything Is Dumb, So Let’s Get Drunk on Roast Beef Vodka

Using A.I. To Get Dumber ∞

Sounding smart is now suspicious.

Monday, March 9th, 2026

Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick writes about how the existence of A.I. detection tools is turning students into worse writers. The particular concern here is not students using A.I. to avoid writing things themselves. Instead, the problem is talented writers being forced to dumb down their writing as a defensive act. Masnick opens with this awful example:

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about my kid’s experience with an AI checker tool that was pre-installed on a school-issued Chromebook. The assignment had been to write an essay about Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron—a story about a dystopian society that enforces “equality” by handicapping anyone who excels—and the AI detection tool flagged the essay as “18% AI written.” The culprit? Using the word “devoid.” When the word was swapped out for “without,” the score magically dropped to 0%.

Revising writing to avoid false positives from A.I. detectors is just an outrageously poor use of time.

Support News Organizations ∞

If you can, you should.

Friday, March 6th, 2026

A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, has a new ad running on Times podcasts. In it, he makes a plaintive request:

I’m encouraging you to support any news organization that’s dedicated to original reporting. If that’s your local newspaper, terrific — local newspapers in particular need your support. If that’s another national newspaper, that’s great too. And if it’s the New York Times, we’ll use that money to send reporters out to find the facts and context that you’ll never get from AI. That’s it, not asking you to click on any link, just subscribe to a real news organization with real journalists doing firsthand, fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you.

Fact-based reporting is crucial for a democratic society. It’s in all of our interests to support it.

Not Your Usual Press Junket ∞

It’s the anti-Woody Harrelson/Rampart AMA.

Thursday, March 5th, 2026

When entertainment reporter Jake Hamilton’s bus broke down in the desert, he knew that the show (business interview) must go on. Variety wrote up the rather amazing result, but honestly, you’re better off just watching the video.1

Ryan Gosling and Jake Hamilton
Ryan Gosling is concerned he might be the last person to see Jake Hamilton alive.

I applaud the professionalism of both Hamilton and his fill-in cameraperson/girlfriend Iris, but Gosling’s insistence on running the interview off the rails to focus on their possibly dire plight is what had me cracking up.

Footnotes:

  1. Said video is archived here. ↩︎

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