Zagat releases list of 'Most Annoying Restaurant Trends'

The world's first crowd-sourced dining guide has released its list of pet peeves when it comes to restaurant trends, and chief among them include pretentious condiments, the practice of up-selling water, restaurant names that take creative liberties with punctuation, and dining with the pooch.

Following on the success of its 2011 post "The 10 Most Annoying Restaurant Trends" -- the most popular on the site last year --  Zagat in the US has released an updated list that runs the gamut from seating arrangements, to tableware, to the loo.

The biggest pet peeve, however? People who insist on bringing their dogs to dinner.

"Don't get us wrong, we love animals, we just don't need to eat dinner next to them," the editors said in the post published January 25.

Other annoying trends singled out on the list include what they call ‘Ketchup Snobbery,' in which restaurants turn up their noses at the condiment and offer ‘homemade organic red pepper jam' with their burgers and fries instead of commercial brands like Heinz.

Same principle goes for water and the prevailing attitude that anything but bottled or sparkling water is couth.

Then there's the trend towards excessive -- and creative -- punctuation and lower-case letters in restaurant names, Zagat complains, a trend that is international in scope.

Brazil's most famous fine dining restaurant of the moment, D.O.M. uses emphatic periods, while avant-garde Chicago chef Homaro Cantu chose to lower-case the name for his newest restaurant, iNG.

The now shuttered Spanish restaurant El Bulli also went by several incarnations. Though officially it recognized itself as elBulli, many publications continue to opt to write it out as two separate, capitalized words for clarity.

But for the editors of Zagat, creative punctuation and spelling is just plain annoying.

"Wh.at is up wi.th all the pe.ri.ods? When you're trying to look up a restaurant name that happens to have a few extra periods thrown in, the excessive punctuation can make it a little bit tricky," the article points out. "Also, when restaurants type up their menus in all lower-case...do they think it makes the cost seem more reasonable? Let's face it, guys, you're not fooling anyone. Period."

Meanwhile, last year's inaugural list spilled over to user-generated site Yelp, where members also griped about communal tables, pop-up restaurants and Asian fusion.

For the full list, visit http://bit.ly/wiIux7.