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Cafe Hon

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

‘Kitchen Nightmares’' Return to Café Hon Airs Friday

Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay checks in on the Hampden eatery after his visit last year.

Gordon Ramsay’s "Kitchen Nightmares'" return to Café Hon will air on Fox Friday night, according to the show’s website. Ramsay, a celebrity chef known for his obscenity laced rants, first visited the Hampden restaurant in 2011 after the eatery nearly went under following its owner, Denise Whiting, trademarking the colloquialism "hon." The controversy lead to a series of protests, boycotts and bad publicity for the café, and Whiting told Ramsay on the show she was on the verge of going out of business. But when the show concluded, after a makeover of the restaurant and its menu, and Whiting apologized for the trademark kerfuffle, all seemed to be right with the world. As of this afternoon Café Hon was still open and operating. Find out how …

SYLVAN FINKELSTEIN

6:49 am on Thursday, December 13, 2012

WHO CARES ABOUT CAFE HON.OVERPRICED FOOD IS GARBAGE AND THE HELP IS JUST AS BAD   more ›

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

It's a HONderful Day

Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting says she'll abandon "hon" trademark.

On Sunday I participated in a roundtable discussion with Gordon Ramsay, who was taping an episode of Kitchen Nightmares about Cafe Hon. On Monday morning, Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting announced that she is abandoning her trademark claim on the word “Hon.” Are the two events related? Maybe. My interest in Hon is through another web site, Welcome To Baltimore, Hon!, a sort of mashup of a city guide and virtual museum that I’ve maintained for several years. There is a widely held sentiment that Whiting had essentially taken a common term of endearment that is tantamount to public property and claimed it as her own for exclusive commercial exploitation. I felt—as do many others—that Whiting’s trademark claims had a chilling effect. There was …

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