I really didn't want to add to this thread but I'll just say this. Giving the owners the full benefit of the doubt, because I really think they didn't intend to name their restaurant after L2, I think that context is everything. In Europe, or Belgium in particular, you would eat at Cafe Leopold, or stay at Hotel Leopold, and think nothing of it. But open a restaurant in Chicago, and well, it raises some eyebrows (though in terms of recent history, I think Leopold II is in the gray area of being not so far out as Napoleon, but no so close as well, I won't say his name for fear of inadvertently invoking the internet rule). Anyway, let's think good thoughts and see Chicago Leopold as the Good Belgian, not the bad one -this sounds like a great restaurant with a great concept.

Wow. What a csfk of a thread. I hope perhaps someday someone might start another thread to discuss the food/service or at least the iced tea at this place. And thanks for letting me know that the guy that sits on the other side of the cube divider from me is evil because he's named Leopold. Should I wait until I feel threatened before I attack him or would I be justified, based upon his evil name, to make a preemptive strike?

ryanwc wrote:

Drover wrote:Do you have any evidence whatsoever that the restaurant was named after this particular Leopald?

Look, when you name your Belgian restaurant Leopold, you get credit for the prominent genocidal maniac from Belgium, not the naturalist from Wisconsin nor the cipher of a king who fathered said maniac and made no other impression on history whatsoever. Even if you didn't know.

I'm not offended by the name. I said it was gross and disgusting. It is. The rape of the Congo happened in my grandparents' lifetime. It's not ancient history. 10 million died. There is just no question that the name is gross. If you named your Chicago-style pizzeria in Rio de Janeiro Gacy's for your friend Ellen Gacy, the name would still be gross. Not offensive if you meant no offense by it. But gross nonetheless - through an unhappy accident.

The posts making a joke out of the rape of the Congo and suggesting maybe the owners meant to name their Belgian restaurant for the fictional Mr. Bloom from Dublin, or that a restaurant whose name relates to a genocidal maniac is on a par with browntrout and enye - those are offensive. I wouldn't even have returned to the subject if it weren't for them. I was quite respectful and mindful of the likelihood that the owners were simply naive in my earlier post; it should not have provoked the comments it did.

But whatever. I wish the owners well. If I were them and I stumbled into this predicament, I'd probably press control-alt-delete and proclaim that it was a Walloon or Flemish restaurant or something, to avoid being an unintentional monument to the only Belgian Leopold that matters. Even if only 1 in a 100 made the connection. But as I said, restaurants deserve to be judged for many things, and this is only one of them. I hope some people will keep this in mind and spare a thought for the victims of Leopold while eating there for other reasons.

That was a hell of a long-winded way of saying "no."

Kman wrote:Wow. What a csfk of a thread. I hope perhaps someday someone might start another thread to discuss the food/service or at least the iced tea at this place. And thanks for letting me know that the guy that sits on the other side of the cube divider from me is evil because he's named Leopold. Should I wait until I feel threatened before I attack him or would I be justified, based upon his evil name, to make a preemptive strike?

He's not evil, just gross and disgusting.

Maybe I need to rethink my plan to open the Pol Potsticker House.

Choey wrote:Maybe I need to rethink my plan to open the Pol Potsticker House.

LOL...I think we have a winner.

Choey wrote:Maybe I need to rethink my plan to open the Pol Potsticker House.

Which would of course be located on Capitol Hill and just a terrible misunderstanding.

Choey wrote:Maybe I need to rethink my plan to open the Pol Potsticker House.

I just spit Coca-Cola onto my monitor.

Probably the funniest comment posted on this forum in years----

Choey wrote:Maybe I need to rethink my plan to open the Pol Potsticker House.

Maybe in Phnom Penh. ...Cambodian cafe is offering diners a slice of life under the Khmer Rouge, with a menu featuring rice-water and leaves

I guess I'm one who can see the point of the opinion about the discomfort with the name (having expressed a similar discomfort of my own with a different restaurant's name), but I see it as an opinion someone's entitled to have, and I don't see anything fruitful to come from trying to argue or ridicule the person out of it. Taste and judgment, among other things, might seem to be characteristics of the presenter, but ultimately, they are in the eye of the beholder. Or so it seems to me.

That said, I concede, based on a very little bit of time spent there and a very little bit of knowledge of the history and culture, I thought that Leopold was a not uncommon name in Belgium. No, I do not have any Belgian census data to support that.

As for Hopleaf, I guess those in the Chicagoland food chat loop know that the owners are Belgian, but let's not slap down the poster who wondered. Looking at their website, I see no mention of it being a Belgian restaurant or of the owners being from Belgium, so it's probably fair to say they don't advertise it as such.

And now back to the food: not being much into beer (although when in Rome ... I of course would try to order and learn something about appreciating some Belgian beer at either of these places - support your favoriteTrappist monks), for me it's all about the mussels and fries. I'm hardly interested at all in what else might be on the menu. Oh, maybe a good Belgian beef stew would catch my eye too.

While the beginning of this thread has been moved from Leopold - Belgium in West Town please direct future "whats in a name" conversation/digression here.

Thanks,
the moderators

zoid wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:

Darren72 wrote:I will go one step further to comment I never associated the name Leopold with Belgium. My frame of reference is more obtuse: a cat in a Russian cartoon.
Regards,

First thing I thought if was the orchestra conductor in the Buggs Bunny cartoons - go figure.

+1...me, too...Bugs with his "hair/ears" swept back and his black formal tails and baton

priceless

Kennyz wrote:

jesteinf wrote:

Kennyz wrote:I'm not interested in boycotting restaurants that choose stupid names, but I do enjoy making fun of them. That said, this one is way down on the list in a city that's seen the likes of The Money Shot, ñ, and EATT

Please let's not forget Browntrout.

TimeOut reports that Homaro Cantu is opening something called "ING". Put it on the list.

Why not Chase or Citibank?

I'm curious as to why Cantu chose for his new resto's name one that is already trademarked, and by a gigantic multi-national corporation. It's not as if it's a fabulous name, either. What gives??

sundevilpeg wrote:I'm curious as to why Cantu chose for his new resto's name one that is already trademarked, and by a gigantic multi-national corporation. It's not as if it's a fabulous name, either. What gives??

Perhaps was influenced by 30 Rock

Katie wrote:I guess I'm one who can see the point of the opinion about the discomfort with the name (having expressed a similar discomfort of my own with a different restaurant's name), but I see it as an opinion someone's entitled to have, and I don't see anything fruitful to come from trying to argue or ridicule the person out of it.

That's where I'm at, FWIW.

Since I don't know my Belgian history, the association with evil wouldn't have occured to me, but now that I have had a crash course I don't think the poster's point is a ridiculous one. It's also not the only possible point-of-view--but it is not a ridiculous one.

As for Hopleaf, I guess those in the Chicagoland food chat loop know that the owners are Belgian, but let's not slap down the poster who wondered. Looking at their website, I see no mention of it being a Belgian restaurant or of the owners being from Belgium, so it's probably fair to say they don't advertise it as such.


I believe Mike Roper, the owner of Hopleaf, is Maltese, not Belgian.

Just read Sifton's review of Ciano in NY, and it immediately reminded me of this thread (although Sam played it a bit more middle of the road than some folks here).

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... ref=dining

I still remember, even as a child (albeit, a Jewish child) being aghast every time the TV commercial for "Adolph's Meat Tenderizer" came on. I mean, it had to be meat tenderizer? Not Adoph's car wash or haberdashery?
There was no question that they named the company after A.H. But the association was inevitable.
Here, we seem to have confused, on and off throughout the thread, naming after someone with mere accidental and unfortunate association.
Still, perhaps they could have just named the place Poirot.

I'm generally quite happy -- and as a longtime lurker going back to the chowhound days, even proud -- that prominent LTH'ers have parleyed their significant knowledge and writing chops into writing and other media gigs.

But here, I've gotta say I'm pretty disappointed with how the moderators handled this thread.

Here we've got the case of a restaurant that a prominent moderator " kept tabs on ... beginning in November," a restaurant whose development and construction he knows so intimately that he's privy to the bathroom sink selection process and can kvetch about the local inspector's discriminatory application of sneeze guard laws. I think it's wholly appropriate for longtime forum members to brag (it's almost always done humbly) about their connections and exclusive invites to not-yet-opened restaurants. There's no question that dues have been paid and laurels earned.

But here we have a restaurant that is, by many people's estimations, "insensitively" named since it evokes, to many, a genocidal maniac who oversaw a debauched and deranged colonial enterprise where soldiers delivered buckets full of hands as an efficiency metric.

I've never seen a thread effectively whitewashed in this way -- the discussion relegated to a less trafficked section of the board on pretenses of a policy not enforced elsewhere. The idea that this site is laser-focused on "the food" is preposterous. People discuss "perceptions" that have nothing to do with the food all the time. All sorts of threads digress into discussion of decor, noise, and other aesthetic qualities. A restaurant's name is no different. Must commenters stop suggesting that avec's chairs are uncomfortable or that Smoque doesn't have a "cafeteria-like" vibe? No more mention of cute waitstaff (including photos -- a practice one might see as borderline sexist, since such photos are almost always of young women)? If the site were consistently about the food and only the food, then the response here would make sense. But of course, discussion of service and weird overuse of scare quotes on menus and how low slung chairs show off buttcracks and noise levels and server's clothing or tattoos or piercings or other physical characteristics are all relevant because a restaurant is much more than just the food -- it's the dining experience that matters. Sometimes the food transcends it, sometimes it doesn't. And if certain people find it difficult to eat, say, tartare while thinking about African genocide, that discussion is relevant, if tangential, partly because it brings more knowledge and awareness of the world -- values this site has tirelessly and successfully promoted, I must stress -- quite literally to the table.

The uncharacteristic response here smacks of a conflict of interest.

Look, Leopold is going to do fine. Anyone who pays basic attention to American culture generally knows that wrongs not done in our backyards barely register on anyone's radar even when they are ongoing and something presumably could be done to stop them. So a long since forgotten genocide far off in the jungle is really only on the minds of a few of us, and mentioning it -- even debating it -- will not and cannot hurt this restaurant's prospects. But the fact that it seems to not have even impressed even slight doubts in the owner's minds is something I think is, again, entirely relevant. The owners seem to have decided that others' perceptions -- much like, say, a prominent media figure casually deploying the phrase "blood libel" with literally no concern whatsoever about the phrase's historical pedigree -- don't matter. We can say what we want, and it means whatever we say it means. I for one am troubled by the rampant sense of entitlement spewed by the ignorant.

LTH moderators, I'm disappointed in you.

queequeg's_steak wrote:Here we've got the case of a restaurant that a prominent moderator " kept tabs on ... beginning in November," a restaurant whose development and construction he knows so intimately that he's privy to the bathroom sink selection process and can kvetch about the local inspector's discriminatory application of sneeze guard laws.

Huh??

Not to prolong this, but there have been other cases where multi-page (not multi-post) digressions have been split off from a restaurant's main thread, or someone just starts a new thread. This discussion had rendered the main Leopold thread basically useless.

In fairness to queequeg, there was a similarly long (though way funnier) name discussion in The Money Shot thread, and it wasn't moved. I suspect that the main reason is that nobody really thought LTHForum cared about The Money Shot as a restaurant anyway, so what the hell. With Leopold though, there are clearly people who want to discuss other aspects of the restaurant, so the name discussion became a bigger distraction.

stevez wrote:

queequeg's_steak wrote:Here we've got the case of a restaurant that a prominent moderator " kept tabs on ... beginning in November," a restaurant whose development and construction he knows so intimately that he's privy to the bathroom sink selection process and can kvetch about the local inspector's discriminatory application of sneeze guard laws.

Huh??

I believe the poster is referring to Mike G's short film made in cooperation with The Reader:



Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

stevez wrote:

queequeg's_steak wrote:Here we've got the case of a restaurant that a prominent moderator " kept tabs on ... beginning in November," a restaurant whose development and construction he knows so intimately that he's privy to the bathroom sink selection process and can kvetch about the local inspector's discriminatory application of sneeze guard laws.

Huh??

I believe the poster is referring to Mike G's short film made in cooperation with The Reader:



Regards,

Which would make the poster's comment quite inaccurate as Mike G stopped being a moderator some time ago.

Kman wrote:Which would make the poster's comment quite inaccurate as Mike G stopped being a moderator some time ago.

And, if this is what the poster was referring to, it was never posted on LTH Forum.

Kennyz wrote:In fairness to queequeg, there was a similarly long (though way funnier) name discussion in The Money Shot thread, and it wasn't moved.

If one searches hard enough they will find any number of conflicting examples. LTHForum's moderation is flashlight as opposed to laser focused.

Though it has been said, I feel compelled to point out to queefueg Mike G is no longer a moderator and the insider/bathroom info was on a video Mike made with the Reader.

Regards,
Gary

queequeg's_steak wrote:If the site were consistently about the food and only the food, then the response here would make sense. But of course, discussion of service and weird overuse of scare quotes on menus and how low slung chairs show off buttcracks and noise levels and server's clothing or tattoos or piercings or other physical characteristics are all relevant because a restaurant is much more than just the food -- it's the dining experience that matters. Sometimes the food transcends it, sometimes it doesn't.

Without addressing the merits of whether a separate "names" thread ought to have been split off from the Leopold thread, I just wanted to second the broad point you make above. Restaurants are about food, and much, much more.

riddlemay wrote:

queequeg's_steak wrote:If the site were consistently about the food and only the food, then the response here would make sense. But of course, discussion of service and weird overuse of scare quotes on menus and how low slung chairs show off buttcracks and noise levels and server's clothing or tattoos or piercings or other physical characteristics are all relevant because a restaurant is much more than just the food -- it's the dining experience that matters. Sometimes the food transcends it, sometimes it doesn't.

Without addressing the merits of whether a separate "names" thread ought to have been split off from the Leopold thread, I just wanted to second the broad point you make above. Restaurants are about food, and much, much more.

I third this.

jesteinf wrote:This discussion had rendered the main Leopold thread basically useless.

I guess, like the comfort of Avec's chairs, the utility of LTH threads is in the eye of the beholder. Depending on the reader, a restaurant thread may be useless if, say, it: doesn't address details of the food and drink, menu prices and value, hours, accessibility for people with disabilities, ownership, parking... if it includes blurry as opposed to clear photos, no photos at all, only photos, disclosed or undisclosed conflicts of interest, too much snark and/or not enough emoticons.

We glean and retain information that is important to us and ignore or maybe snark at information that isn't, but even if I'm concerned with only a small part of the food knowledge shared here, the big picture is what keeps me coming back. The digressions (and not just the many for which I am responsible) often lend the most relevance--and fun--to our discussions.

The digressions (and not just the many for which I am responsible) often lend the most relevance--and fun--to our discussions.

Agreed.