In our review of Cap­it­ol, we men­tioned how we go there des­pite the dread­ful­ness of their web­site (but you prob­ably missed that bit and cut straight to talk­ing about neg­ronis). What espe­cially is so bad about their site? There’s Flash, con­tact details hid­den, menus embed­ded that don’t even work prop­erly (can any­one tell me what they serve for brunch? Or how much wines cost?), and in this day and age music that plays auto­mat­ic­ally. Aaaaaaaaaaaaar­gh! But of course, Cap­it­ol are by no means the only offend­ers in this area.

When I’m think­ing about going some­where to eat, I want to know a)where they are, b) what times they’re open c) if I need to make a reser­va­tion and most import­antly d) what food they’re serving. Those should be simple things to find out, right? Wrong.

Feast­craft have a Res­taur­ant Web­site Drink­ing Game, and we’re about to get very drunk.

  • Every time your iPhone gives you a lego block “Flash miss­ing” mes­sage take a drink. Then call Steve Jobs and tell him what you think of him.
  • If music starts play­ing auto­mat­ic­ally – take a drink. Take two if the song is some tired stock “your genre here” song. Take anoth­er one if there’s no “mute” but­ton or if there’s one but your selec­tion is not mem­or­ized between vis­its.
  • If there’s a nifty scroller of pic­tures of food – take a drink. Take two if it’s in Flash.
  • If there’s no text any­where on the land­ing page that shows open­ing hours and loc­a­tion – take a drink. Take two if there’s none any­where.
  • If there’s no phone num­ber on the front page – take a drink.
  • For any of the fol­low­ing words in the restaurant’s descrip­tion or “about” page take a drink: seared to per­fec­tion, a dream in, French cas­u­al, fusion, delect­able, eclect­ic, mouth­wa­ter­ing, sea­son­al, fresh, glu­ten free, vel­vety, suc­cu­lent, lus­cious, most won­der­ful.
  • Find the menu. If it’s in PDF take a drink. If it’s a JPG or PNG and can’t be indexed by search engines take two drinks. Take three drinks if someone just pho­to­graphed an open menu and pos­ted that pic­ture.
  • If the res­taur­ant wants you to become friends on Face­book take a drink. You’re look­ing for food, not friends. If the res­taur­ant wants you fol­low it on Twit­ter take anoth­er drink. Then hunt down and beat up a ran­dom “social media con­sult­ant”. Have a big gulp if the res­taur­ant <iframe>’d their fan­page some­where. (Actu­ally, we don’t have such a prob­lem with res­taur­ants on Twit­ter, because some­times it’s nice to know the people – but if they ARE going to be on Twit­ter, they should be respond­ing – ahem Mon­soon Poon)
  • If there’s more text about the chef than about the food, take a drink.

TL:DR – Wel­ling­ton res­taur­ants: please leave the Alistair Cox­ing to the decor, and get someone more prac­tic­al to do your web­sites. Cheers!

So what good res­taur­ants have bad sites? Who’s doing it right? Who’s doing it oh so wrong? Name and shame, people!