Dueling Flavors

A friend of a friend recently opened a restaurant in Shanghai called 斗味.

斗味

That’s as in 斗争 (struggle) or 决斗 (duel), and as in 味道 (scent, taste) or 口味 (flavor).

After dinner the other night, a friend was jokingly telling me that the name could be read 二十味 or 二十口未(口味). Ah, characterplay is always welcome… This particular example reminded me of Lin Danda (a timeless classic in character ambiguity).

斗味 is pretty good, and has very reasonable lunch specials, if you live way out on the west side of Shanghai. (It has a Dianping page, but is too new to have any reviews, apparently.)


Related: 味儿大

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. That character font is really funky … reminds me of another ‘… wei’ restaurant I saw recently: http://themelbournenaut.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/bad-smell-restaurant/

  2. 尚德Nathan Says: July 5, 2012 at 12:57 am

    cool character play

  3. Love the character play. I actually think it looks more like 三十口未/口味 as the horizontal stroke of the 斗 provides the bottom stroke of the 三.

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