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!