Restaurant wins fight to keep 'rude' name

A Glasgow restaurant is to be allowed to carry on offering a 'Phat Phuc' menu, despite complaints that the name was offensive.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled in favour of the owners of the Vietnamese restaurant, the Hanoi Bike Shop. It had put up posters on a train and at a station advertising a weekly noodle promotion under the name 'Phat Phuc'.

But two people complained that the name 'sounded like a swear word', with one upset that children might see it.

The restaurant's owners pointed out that the Vietnamese phrase 'Phat Phuc' is pronounced 'Fet Fook' and means 'Happy Buddha'. And the ASA took their side.

"In the context of the posters, we considered that viewers who might have been offended by bad language were likely to recognise that 'Phuc' was from a reference to Southeast Asian language, was different from the expletive and would not necessarily be pronounced in the same way," it ruled.

"While some older children might have pronounced it as the expletive, given the context of an ad for a Vietnamese restaurant and that the word was taken from this language we did not consider that this made it unsuitable for them to see. We therefore concluded that the posters were not irresponsibly placed where children could see them."
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Let's hope that the complainants never find themselves in Chelsea, where the Phat Phuc noodle bar has been trading for years. There's another restaurant with the same name in Saigon.

And there are plenty of others with equally suggestive names: Saloon Wanker's Corner Cafe, for example, in Wilsonville in the US - where the word doesn't carry the same meaning.

Or there's Beaver Choice restaurant in Arizona; and Booty's House of Crabs. Pho King Fabulous sells Vietnamese food in Toronto.

Here in the UK, Otis Spunkmeyer's bakery is open for business in Covent Garden, and Chickpizz is still selling chicken and pizza in Stoke Newington. However, the F***offee cafe in Bermondsey was ordered by its landlord to remove its sign last year, after complaints that the name was offensive.