Restaurant: Joy, Hyères, (France)

The people who study these things for a living claim that the shorter the restaurant name, the better its chances for success. (aja, nu, otto, per se are just a few examples of this principle in action) These are the same types of people who charge large amounts of money to tell owners where to place things on the menu, for maximum profitability.

Yes, studies show that where items are placed on a menu have a profound effect on how many times people choose them. Ever see a box drawn around a menu item? (well come to think of it, it would be hard to do on the blackboards over there...) You can bet the boxed items are the ones that deliver the most profit dollars to the operator.

Not that you asked or anything.

If you are ever in the city of Hyères, be sure to become a Joy seeker, you'll that yourself.

I used to live in Toulon, which is only, what, 20Km or thereabouts from Hyères. At the time I was working for an outfit that used to repair small home computers (Atari ST, Commodore Amiga etc.), maritime navigation equipment (autopilots, VHF radios, depth sounders etc.) and CCTV stuff.

We had not long signed up with a British company to do the maintenance on a site they'd rigged with a truckload of CCTV equipment for a very rich mogul of Egyptian origin (who shall remain unnamed) in his secondary (or was it tertiary?) dwelling in St. Tropez. The Brit who was in charge of this client's account came out to see us and we decided to wine and dine him in a restaurant called "Les Oubliettes", also in Hyères.

"Les Oubliettes" basically means "The Dungeons", and that's what the place looked like! It was quite an effective decor. The walls were nicely adorned with things like, well, shackles and what have you. Whether they're for the customers to put unhelpful waiters into ot vice-versa is by the by...

The food was excellent, and we all had a good laugh at the guy's expense. The place specialised in seafood and one of the things on the menu was lobster. Of course, he didn't realize that it was traditional in a restaurant like that for the waiter to wheel up the tank containing live lobsters and for the diner to choose which one to drop in the pot. That already made his eyes pop out of their sockets.

Then, when the cooked lobster finally turned up we all (except him) cried with one voice "You switched lobsters! It's not the same one!" because, as you know, the live animal is brown/blue and when cooked it goes "lobster" red. The waiter realised immediately that we were messing with the poor guy's head and didn't protest, but you should have seen our victim's face... "Deer in the headlamps" comes to mind.

Unfortunately it was all too much for him. He ate the lobster and apparently enjoyed it, but spent most of the night on the can!

Note to self: arrange business trip to Paris soon.