5 Hilariously Profound Restaurant Sidewalk Signs

Categories: Five Great...

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That's Nerdalicious
Because really, nobody cares if your soup of the day is minestrone or split pea. Here are five restaurant (or bar or coffee shop) signs that make you stop and ponder.

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Five Types of Diners Who Need To Be Blacklisted From Restaurants Forever

Categories: Five Great...
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Flickr user slasher-fun
There is a social contract implied when you dine in a restaurant in this country. The social contract is pretty simple: "Don't be an ass." It shouldn't need to be said, really, but apparently restaurants are special places where manners aren't needed and you can act however you like.

Anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant--hell, anyone who's ever eaten in a restaurant--knows there are people who have apparently just arrived from Planet Putz and don't know the rules.

It's an epidemic, and we're starting to export it--I heard someone in France trying to put together a dish from assorted menu ingredients while the server stood there with a stormy look on his face. This will not do.

So here are five sub-genres of their kind who need to be deleted from the reservation books before they step over the threshold. Blacklist them! 

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Five Cray Cray Finds At SF's Winter Fancy Food Fest

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Food with its own soundtrack. Kinda makes us feel dirty....

When we were talked into attending the Winter Fancy Food Fest in the Bay Area, we anticipated some hoity-toity finds. What we didn't count on was eccentric bites reminiscent of those Truly Tasteless Jokes books. Don't get us wrong-- they're all legit products. We just think creative fell more than thought outside of the box.

Here's what caught our attention and made us go WTF. Remember: Cray cray is in the eye of the beholder.
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The World's Best Guide to Buying Tequila That Doesn't Suck

Categories: Five Great...
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Dave Lieberman
I'm a liquor store yenta. That's right; if I see you picking up one of those neon green bottles of margarita mix, or God forbid the bilious-looking piss-yellow bottle with the Cuervo garbage already mixed in, I will come over and strike up and awkward conversation in which I try to convince you to buy something better, because that stuff is a one-way ticket to a hangover.

See also:
- Five Ways to Tell a Great Tequila Bar From a Mediocre One
- Leyva's Liquors: Always,
Always Your Last Stop Before Heading for the Border
- Four Reasons Why Patrón Tequila Is an Affront to Mexicans--And One Reason Why It's Not


The best is seeing people with a cart full of $35 vodka and $40 whiskey looking at José Cuervo Gold. Why not spend $3 more and get something better? Did that Tracy Byrd song ("I went ten rounds with José Cuervo-o-o...") really have such an impact on you?

And another thing... why are you spending so much money on sipping tequila? Is it the Cristal effect, where the Don Julio and Patrón brands are the "cool" brands, so it's worth paying $50 for a fifth of tequila that half the bars in America serve ice cold anyway?

It's a nationwide epidemic, this affinity for bad or overpriced tequila, and it's time for it to stop. Read on for my opinionated, completely unbiased opinion after two decades drinking tequila here and in Mexico. Don't like it? Tell me what a pendejo I am in the comments--but show your work and leave your own suggestions!
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The 5 Best College Drinking Games Since Beer Pong

Categories: Five Great...
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Flickr User Chris Gilmore
Pictured: 80% of my college education


Let's face it: No one enjoys beer pong. It's a drinking game where four people are having fun while everyone else is crowded awkwardly around a table afraid that they're going to miss their team being called. It's a game of skill played during a time when most people can't even urinate standing up. When it takes too long, it's boring. When it goes too quickly, it's not fun.

Really, Beer Pong is a shitty drinking game. Luckily, if there's anything that UCI taught me, there's many better ones. These are my five favorites.

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Top 5 Food Videos of 2012

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What kind of world would it be without Internet video? Most give The Food Network, Comedy Central and Cartoon Network a run for their money, and best of all, you need only commit to a few minutes of your time instead of a full half-hour.

Here are my favorite videos of the year.

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5 Things You Should Never Do With Your Restaurant's Website

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Kartik Malik
Basically how I spend my life


The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is wake up my laptop and check Twitter. When I leave the house, the first thing I check for when I do my three-pat pocket test is my phone, not my keys or my wallet. The first thing I do when I get into work? E-mail. Then coffee.

Let's just say that the Internet is a big part of our lives now (I guess there's an argument to be made that I spend too much time online, but let's ignore that). But, despite how often the Internet finds itself in our pants, our homes, and our cars, I still run into websites that are just... horrible. Terrible. More »

Edwin's Top Five Drinks of 2012!

Categories: Five Great...
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Edwin Goei

You've read enough of these intros from the rest of the gang, so let's just get to my list of five favorite drinks, shall we?

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Edwin's Top Five Restaurants of 2012!

Categories: Five Great...
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Mary Pastrana


I always go into these end-of-year lists thinking they'd be be a cinch to do. Then, I actually start doing it and realize how hard it is. No, it's not the writing part--that's easy; it's the winnowing process that's painful. It took me a day of deliberation to pare my original list of ten of the best restaurants I reviewed this year down to seven, and then to five. Unfortunately, South of Nick's and The Playground were number 6 and 7. But herewith is my final list. In each, I highlight at least one dish that made that particular restaurant great.


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Dave's Top 5 Drinks of 2012

Categories: Five Great...
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This year, we're going to publish our top drinks as well as our top restaurants, and I already know where the bone of contention will lie with my list; not all of these are cocktails. I don't want to put up something that may have rotated out of availability, since the best cocktails in Orange County are often seasonal items that don't last more than a few months as menus change. Also, there are some outstanding liquors out there that deserve to be more widely known.

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