Dear downtown seafood restaurant, seeing what you thought was a no doubt clever advertisement makes me want to swallow my tongue in self-defence every time I drive down Barrington St. What, in the name of Saint Holy Fuck of Fishsticks, made you think that a fork morphing into a fishhook would make people want to eat? It makes me want to build a fort around my soft palate with tiny, anti-cutlery cannons. It makes me count the seconds until I reach the billboard for the other downtown seafood restaurant with happy smiling lobster man on it. The change makes me want to go there instead even more. This billboard, and I’m sure it’s elsewhere I haven’t seen making people clamp their teeth, is a visceral visual punch against eating, not an attestation to how ‘fresh’ your food is. For the love of cod, pay an ad agency that isn’t clueless and get a new ad. —Taking the Ferry Instead

This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2011.

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36 Comments

  1. “It makes me want to build a fort around my soft palate with tiny, anti-cutlery cannons”

    I like that lol

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  3. Beware the restaurants that claim “Fresh” seafood. Sure it was fresh…..at one point…but most hold on to the fish until it begins to go bad, and still claim it’s “Fresh.”

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  5. Going to seafood resturants towards the beginning of the week, as oppose to at the end of the week, usually the better bet.

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  6. Not true regarding the beginning of the week vs the end of the week from my experience.

    I worked for a large chain which had deliveries on Sunday evenings of meats and produce. These items were usually put out on Wednesday as Monday and Tuesday were mostly clearing out the cases from the previous week. Sunday crew spent their shift re-packaging the items with a new date……..hence the PACKAGED ON notice…….it does not say DELIVERED ON …….

    I stopped eating meat shortly afterward.

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  7. I thought I was the only one cringing at this billboard. Apparently not. It evokes images of eating fish with a bloodied, hook-pierced tongue, sends me screaming in the opposite direction. If this restaurant is so clueless about its ads, the dining experience must be a real treat!

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  8. Koda — you know those ‘bbq’d’ chickens (the raw ones with bbq spice on them) you can get at the grocery stores? Yeah. They’re just older chickens with some spice to mask the old ness.

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  10. I know someone that works delivering fish all over HRM and most of the places get frozen fish. If you want fresh fish… go see the roadside guys from out of town and cook it yourself!

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  11. this almost sounds like col. ivan here, doing the bitch thing. but i will go out on a limb, and say that it isn’t.
    anyway, they have to have some kind of CATCHY phrase or picture, to LURE you in. then they can HOOK you on the meal. sounds FISHY to me, but you just never know, it must work.
    don’t bother to CARP about it, just go in, and tell them, that you are not amused by the ad. just FISHING here, but did you go in o.p.?

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  12. I re-read your post PK. I thought you were referring to the rotisserie chickens that you buy all warm and greasy nestled in their little plastic pleasure dome and take home with some slaw and crusty bread and eat with your hands Viking style tearing the moist flesh asunder and washing it down with firkins of black porter. ( A couple of those would go down real good about now – Lllllaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh)
    Over-reacted just a tad. Sorry. >: (

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  13. It must have seemed “edgy” to the creative folks who dreamed it up.

    Maybe they should have checked with somebody outside of their terrarium/isolation unit.

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  16. “is it safe?” you are the only other person who gets that reference uncle vanya^^

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  17. People really don’t want to know where their food comes from, do they?

    It has been a lame campaign though, what with the chef in his hip waders and all. It just comes across as low-rent phoniness.

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  20. I am absoluteley certain that the goddam Rubber Dam was developed by the Nazis and it’s technology appropriated by the West under the auspices of the infamous “Operation Paperclip”. Still, it does prevent me from screaming “OH MY GOD THE JEWS ARE HIDING IN THE ATTIC” when the drill touches pulp. >: 0

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  24. I’m sure you’ll have a halibut time at the other plaice, i wouldn’t be caught floundering at the first restaurant.

    Sorry for carping on, have a good weekend!

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  25. oh COD anglo, we are of a warped mind. SHAD you said anything, i would have been CRABBY, all day. but all in all, a FINNY bitch here today.

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  29. The Brindle didn’t make it to the Swiss border and is now looking at 2 weeks in der Kooler? Das ist gute newz Painey. Rawk!

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  30. teehee…she was one mile from where she escaped. hypothermia and messy paws but all is well^^thanks to any bitches that were searching

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  32. Oh my goodness painey!!!! Yay. That so awwesome. I seen qa couple walking a dog that looked just like her and almost pulled over and questioned them. But they had 2 the same and didn’t look like dog theives. That’s so awesome. I’m so happy for you.
    Hey z. I need a direct number for you. I’ve been at PC medic all morning now.

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  33. thanks guys, i finally had a good sleep on saturday. dog and greyhound people be all kinds a crazy. you can hide but we will find you^^

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  34. have you tried turning it off and on again?

    what’s busted now?
    mail me… if you haven’t already.

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  35. It was the power – they needed to enstall a new power supply – it wouldn’t turn on at all – the button just kept clicking and I tried everything – but I needed it fixed this morning so I could work.

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  36. Is it, by any chance, a Sony, RC? Same thing happened to mine.

    I’m kind of up shit creek here at work because office 07 won’t open the database I need properly because the 03 extension isn’t compatible. So i get some stupid “#Error” by the name and address and i can’t fix it. I tried exporting it to word to manually input the name/addresses, but it gets rid of half the other stuff.

    And no one seems to be able to figure out how to fix it. And they won’t install 03 on here because they don’t want to downgrade or something. *sigh*

    So for now I have to get someone else in here to do them up for me, which sucks because I hate sloughing off work onto others 🙁

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