There are certain cross-cultural no-nos when it comes to designing, naming and theming a restaurant, the primary among them being, don’t associate your restaurant in people’s minds with things that taste bad, and things you should under no circumstances eat. Poison, for instance, makes a good band name but a terrible restaurant name. (See example at left.) A close second, in my book, is death, dying or dead people — I’ve always found it extremely weird when people put out little snacks and coffee at funeral parlors, for instance. I’m near dead people; I don’t want anything in my mouth. But just as with every seemingly hard-and-fast rule, there are people out there to break them; much to our amazement there are not one but several restaurants that trade on death as a theme.