Restaurants offering quaint names often have great food

What's in a name? Often a pretty good story, or in the case of restaurants, good food.

On my family's vacation through New York and Ohio, I started jotting down unusual restaurant names. Some that I found:

• Cafe Tu Tu Tango, Niagara Falls, Canada

• Last Chance Restaurant, Willowick, Ohio

• For Goodness Jake's, downtown Cleveland

• Angry Bull Steakhouse, Huron, Ohio

• A Passage to India, Niagara Falls, Canada

When we sat down in a small eatery called RJ's in Kirtland, Ohio, I asked our server, Judy, if it was named for the owner. She told me no, it was actually named for owner Tom Ponzurick's brother, Roger Joseph, who died 14 years ago. Since she's Tom's wife, Judy should know.

Tom and Judy opened RJ's three years ago, with Tom doing the cooking and Judy waiting on tables much of the time. Before ever getting to Ohio, I'd already heard good things about RJ's.

My brother-in-law swears by their house barbecue sauce, ordering it by the case. Several friends who recently traveled to Kirtland raved about the ribs. And my son, Jess, who served an LDS mission in the Cleveland area, has savored many a pulled pork sandwich there. At $5.50, it fit into his tight missionary budget better than ribs.

But my experience at RJ's underscored this sage advice: If a place is known for its barbecue, or some other signature dish, that's your best bet. In fact, Jason Olson, a photographer here at the Deseret Morning News, takes this a step further. Whenever he ends up in a locally owned restaurant and sees a dish that's named for the restaurant (i.e., "The Caputo" sandwich at Caputo's) he orders it. After all, if someone is willing to put their name on it, it's got to be pretty good.

I should have followed this conventional wisdom and ordered RJ's Famous BBQ Pork Sandwich (shredded pork with barbecue sauce, topped with cole slaw and melted cheddar cheese). That's what my son did.

But I was lured in by the special of the day — pasta primavera with chicken. I was just in more of a veggie mood, and this one offered green peppers, tomatoes, onions, black olives, and spinach. It was OK — better after I requested a side order of marinara sauce to doctor it up. I didn't realize what I was missing until my husband let me sample the meaty ribs he'd ordered. They were liberally doused in a sauce that, to me, is similar to K.C. Masterpiece, only a little more spicy and sassy.