Some go boring: pick the address, and voila, Campton Place, Hawthorne Lane, etc. Some go eponymous, which rhymes with non-adventurous, pompous and presumptuous: Gary Danko, Michael Mina. Some think too much, and pick up names which mean goblet in Latin, or shut your mouth in French, leaving the hard work to the PR firm to clean up the mess and explain it really, really means tranquil. There's been a trend for the one syllable punchy food-related words (fork, spoon, sauce, home, chow, grub, lime, the now defunct dine or bite), ideal for the ADD afflicted MTV generation. Hopefully we're out of that trend, since this is paragraph two, and we haven't finished making our initial point. And then there is the placed named after the touristy landmarks for the corresponding cuisine: taj mahal, or Angkor Borei, or brisas de acapulco. Add to the mystique of the location by associating the exoticism of the cooking with that of remote locations.

We find the Palace Steakhouse fit in this last category: any palace evocation is very remote. Like, say Shalimar, the name here is only a door to an alternate universe of elegance and royalty. The place is thoroughly anchored in a reality which is definitely non-palatial. Versailles it is not, and no one will confuse the stairs to the ladies' bathroom with the marble stairs in the Great Gatsby's mansion.