Enough with the Wok and Roll.

The restaurant name “Wok and Roll” is played out. And it’s BEEN played out. By the power vested in me, no more new restaurants shall be named Wok and Roll. Existing ones, I suppose, can stay.

It's ENOUGH already. Chinese and/or Japanese restaurants are commonplace all over the country, from familiar suburban strip malls to bustling city centers and everywhere in between. Many businesses use puns in their names; that's nothing new. But with only so many food-related puns to go around, there are now hundreds of restaurants who have settled on the exact same name: Wok and Roll.

Every major city in the US has at least one Wok and Roll. There's one right by the street I used to live on in Washington, DC. There are more than a dozen in the state of Florida. You could drive up the I-35 through the Midwestern states and eat at a good five to ten locations without leaving the highway.

There's a Wok and Roll in Costa Rica, another in Iran, one in Kenya, and several dotting the map across western Europe. There's one in Sri Lanka, one in Mongolia, and several in Australia. Clearly, many people think alike.

But the name is so common that any attempt at humor is now completely lost. When I see a restaurant named Wok and Roll, I do not give a thought to the “humor” in its name. My brain completely overlooks it. I'm sure that's the same for every other person above the age of 10 who's chosen to eat at one in the past few decades. Have any of them even stopped to think about the pun in the restaurant name... ever? No, they haven't.

At one time, the first few restaurants to use this pun must've been clever and creative. It's not that it's bad wordplay. Back when the standards of comedy weren't what they are now, a restaurant name like this might get a double take, a chuckle from Dad, and a stop from a hungry family on a long road trip. It may have also signaled that the restaurant's owners were lighthearted jesters who wanted to reflect a jovial spirit in their life's work.

But nowadays? Every last article, image, video, meme, piece of audio, website comment section, and other form of meaningless content uses puns liberally. Puns have become so basic that even patently unfunny people have mastered them. To me, taking the time to conceptualize, plan, finance, and open a restaurant, only to go on and name it Wok and Roll, is akin to not even bothering to name it in the first place.

Actually, it's worse, because a restaurant with no name at all is at least interesting. It's different. Wok and Roll is government-issued: their proprietors are announcing to the world that they’ve given up before they’ve even begun. And you know what, I bet their food is delicious. ✍︎