5000+ Restaurant Name Ideas | Suggestions by Cuisine
About 30,000 people across the world search for restaurant name ideas every month. No wonder, one of the many challenges in starting a new restaurant is naming it! While it might appear less important, once the business picks up, in no time the restaurant name becomes the brand identity. So it’s worth putting in a little effort to make sure your “identity” is unique, creative, and reflects your restaurant’s personality.
This article is an effort to suggest some restaurant names and also share some dos and don’ts.
Table of Contents
Indian restaurant name ideas
We picked the names of the best-rated restaurants serving Indian food and we found that most of them use cuisine type in their name. Most restaurants use “Grill”, “Bistro”, “Spice”, “Biryani”, “Cafe”, “Pub” in their names. Apart from that prefixes like “Royal”, “Grand” and suffixes like “Plaza”, “Club”, “Junction”, “Paradise” and “Place” are quite popular.
South Indian restaurant names
If you serve a niche cuisine, it’s better to convey that in the name as well. If a particular dish like “Dosa”, “Coffee” or “Idli” is your specialty, you can include that in the name. Also using terms like “Bhavan”, “Vilas”, or “Udupi” would strongly indicate that you serve South Indian cuisine.
Chinese restaurant names
If you are starting a Chinese restaurant, you could use words like “Asia”, “Wok”, “Dragon”, “Red”, “Orient”, or “East” in the name. You can also use dish names like “Momos”, “Sizzlers”, “Noodles”, “Rolls”, etc.
Pizza shop & Italian restaurant names
For pizza shops and Italian restaurants, you could use words like “Oven”, “Crust”, “Slice”, etc. It is also a good idea to include your recipe’s place of origin like “Chicago”, “Boston”, or “Italy”.
Arabic restaurant names
For an Arabian restaurant, you could use popular dish names like “Shawarma” or “Grill”. Words like “Arabia”, “Emperor’s” and “Darbar” can lend a Middle Eastern touch to the restaurant’s name.
Seafood restaurant names
If your restaurant specializes in seafood, you could use words like “Wharf”, “Bay”, “Cove”, “Fisherman’s”, “Beach” etc. You can also use the recipe’s place of origin like “Goan”, “Konkan”, or “Malabar”.
Unique restaurant name ideas
One of the best ways to create a unique name is by mixing and matching popular prefixes and suffixes. Below are some ideas that you can use.
Using a dish name
- Chicken
- Biryani
- Shawarma
- Rolls
- Dosa
- Grill
- Barbecue
- Curry
Using popular restaurants suffixes
- Palace
- Kitchen
- House
- Point
- Corner
- Park
- Mahal
- Bhavan
- Vilas
- Bistro
- Junction
- Lounge
- Station
- Boat
- Street
- Bites
Using recipe’s place of origin
- Goan
- Konkan
- Udupi
- Punjabi
- Hyderabadi
- California
- Chicago
- Arabian
- Malabar
Use popular restaurant adjectives
- Royal
- Grand
- Little
- Big
- New
- Golden
- Tasty
- Spicy
- Cheesy
- Fat
Dos and don’ts
- Create a name that’s easy to pronounce and less ambiguous to spell.
- Keep the restaurant name relevant to your service and offerings.
- Avoid names that conflict with existing business and trademarks.
- Make sure your name is unique, when people search they should not find multiple brands with the same name.
- Ensure that website name, and social media handles (Facebook, Instagram, etc) are available.
- Register a trademark for your logo and brand name as soon as possible.
Restaurant name generator
Here’s a business name generator tool that you can use – Restaurant Name Generator.
Website & social media name availability tool
It’s a good idea to ensure that website and social media handles are available for your brand. You can use this tool to check availability – Namecheckr.
Download 5000+ restaurant names list
To write this article, we picked up the top-rated restaurants across the most popular cities in India and filtered them by their cuisine type. We excluded words like “Restaurant”, “Hotel” etc., and created a word cloud to find the most popular words.
Download a copy of the 5000+ restaurant names list.
Other useful articles
If you are starting a new restaurant, you might also like our article on how to start a restaurant business.
Starting a Cafe? Check out our article on Cafe names.
Opening a Bakery or Cake Shop? Checkout out the article on Bakery names.