“Trébuchet” is simply French for “catapult.”
But is there an actual joke here other than making fun of pretentious new restaurants? And more importantly, do they have a team of Heimlich experts on staff?
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Comics I Don't Understand 
Going to a fancy restaurant and ending up feeding you date by catapulting bites of food directly into his/her mouth is mildly amusing. I didn’t laugh, but I did smile.
All the meatballs are going low.
If you figure 75% of the food will end up on the floor, it throws off the budget.
I suggest as their slogan “Trébuchet’s — The Food Here Will Make You Want to Hurl.”
Jael’s Tent Peg, it sounds like a good business model to me: the customer will probably remain hungry enough to order seconds.
Yeah, Mitch is right. They aren’t the same thing, though they serve essentially the same function. A trebuchet uses a counterweight, while a catapult uses tension. Points to Blazek, though, for actually drawing trebuchets, rather than the standard cartoon catapult.
Could there be something here with pronouncing trebuchet in a French fashion sounding like it contains “chez”, which is a common element in the names of French restaurants?
Yes, there is a difference between a trebuchet and a catapult, and no, it isn’t really important.
A trebuchet can be built on any scale, and there are hobbyists who build them big enough to fling cars. A Youtube search should reveal plenty of examples.
In the meantime, there’s Mythbusters
“Points to Blazek, though, for actually drawing trebuchets, rather than the standard cartoon catapult.”
Actually, I think it would have been better with catapults instead of trebuchets… the restaurant (inaccurately) choosing the more pretentious French word over the mundane English word works as a commentary. You can charge more for le poisson with pommes frites, too.
If this is INSIDE the restaurant, shouldn’t its name be written backwards on the window?
Actually Bill, since “catapult” comes from the middle French and entered English around the 16th century, and “trebuchet” comes from old French and entered English back when it was Middle English, the “recent” pretentious “foreign” word in need of translation would be “catapult”…
(Note the restaurant missed an opportunity for pretension and did not include the accent aigu.)
That new restaurant, Trébuchet is très chic.
I have an incomplete memory of some segment of Internet nerd culture making a big deal of the distinct configurations (as they saw it) that would distinguish a catapult and a trebuchet. This may have been connected with a TV show that had people flinging objects with one or the other — maybe “Northern Exposure” among fiction programs, or “Myth Busters” among … something-or-other.
I never fully absorbed the specifics of the claimed distinction, but it maybe had to do with a completely different path for the counterweight and the payload. Or perhaps just use of a counterweight at all versus propulsion by elastic or twisted fabric.
“shouldn’t its name be written backwards on the window?”
That’s the back wall, not the front window.
With curtains?
With curtains. And also flowerpots hanging on it.
Hmmm. I still see it as a window. Anyway, the name has an apostrophe; does one assume that is someone’s name? Bonjour, Monsieur Trébouchet, comment-allez vous . . .
If it were a window, you’d be able to see through it to whatever’s on the other side.
I just figured the artists was so tired of drawing all those trébuchets, s/he didn’t bother with a sidewalk scene.
From time to time a high-end restaurant with a gimmick will open. There was one in Boston that served tiny tiny portions. It was expected that you order several different entrees.
Here’s an article about gimmicky restaurants: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-restaurants-that-focus-stupid-gimmicks-instead-food/
@ MiB – That restaurant article is mildly amusing, but it needs a NSFW tag for repetitive and utterly superfluous profanity. I thought “Cracked” was a magazine, but apparently they don’t bother with editors.
Hm. Am I the only one that actually chuckled out loud with this one?
“I thought ‘Cracked’ was a magazine”
Print media is SO last millennium…
Cracked WAS a magazine, and then 9/11, and then the anthrax attack that shut down their building and put them out of business for five years, and then they revived the brand as a web site.