The Curious Choice of Calling a Restaurant a "Bistrotheque"

A Cambridge restaurant that bills itself as a "bistrotheque" was recently reviewed — ambivalently — by the Boston Herald. A bistrotheque is not a real thing. Or is it? Let's take a look at their descriptors of choice.

The place is called Think Tank, for starters. I mean, there are a lot of think tanks in Cambridge. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is a good one. And who can't love Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government? But just because a place serves "globally influenced cuisine" to a bunch of pretentious Harvard frosh does not make it a think tank.

Curiously, I'm okay with the descriptor "bistrotheque." There's a pretty nice restaurant in London with the same name. But if you're serving a bulgogi burger, you're probably not a bistro. The French are mad up tight about shit like that.

Those Feed, Mind, Body & Soul on the corners of the logo make an insidious equivalency between the mind, the body, the soul and feed which, as distinct from the first three elements is an external component and not part of the substance of the tri-partite human being. Either that or there's grammatical inconsistency going on.

There are both open mics [bottom left] and open "decks," [upper left] the latter which is called "Unprotected Decks." Double demerits!

· Fill up at Think Tank [Boston Herald]
· All Eater Lexicon Posts on Eater [-E-]