I have been wanting to write a blog post about the yellow-colored billboard in the above photograph for some time now. The billboard announces that a restaurant has been featured in the Conde Nast’s Top 50 Restaurants in India in 2024. However, the name of the actual restaurant that made it to the list, Pumpkin Tales is not featured prominently in the billboard. The name/logo of Pumpkin Tales is featured in smaller size on the bottom right-hand side of the billboard and is almost completely hidden behind the leaves of a small plant!

The name/logo of the Chinese restaurant in the same building, Zhouyu is featured next to the billboard in an outdoor advertising lightbox. If one doesn’t bother to read the fine print associated with the yellow billboard or to go online and check at the Conde Nast list, there is a possibility of assuming that Zhouyu is the one that has made it to the Conde Nast list. This is exactly what happened with me a couple of months ago, and I ended up for a dinner at Zhouyu.

I have been wondering why a restaurant would commission and install a billboard in which its name is not featured prominently or could lead to confusion about another restaurant having won the award in its place. Unless if the other restaurant (Zhouyu) belongs to the same group/ management. I tried searching online.

Pumpkin Tales’ website does not list Zhouyu as one of the associated/ sister-concern restaurants in its locations section. Ditto for Zhouyu’s locations section as well which did not list Pumpkin Tales as one of the associated/ sister-concern restaurants. However, the Book a Table section on Pumpkin Tales website which led to Eatapp listed Zhouyu as one of the options in the dropdown list. I searched online and landed on a September 2020 article in the Mylapore Times with the headline, “Pumpkin Tales launches its Chinese restaurant ‘Zhouyu’ at Alwarpet.”

Is it genuine oversight from the restaurant management? I looked at the photo one more time. The prominent food image on the yellow billboard about Conde Nast list caught my attention this time. The food item resembles a Chinese/ South-east Asian dish in a white ceramic bowl with a couple of chopsticks placed on top of the bowl.

The combination of the image of what looks like a Chinese food item in the yellow billboard as well as the tagline, “A Chinese Kitchen” on top of Zhouyu in the outdoor advertising lightbox placed close to it could trip someone into making the wrong association between Zhouyu and the Conde Nast list, as happened with me.

To be fair when viewed from the other side, the food item on the yellow billboard and the Zhouyu outdoor advertising lightbox are spaced apart. So, the scope for confusion is lesser. Plus, there is nothing obstructing the Pumpkin Tales name.

This billboard placement and different sized fonts used in the billboard, reminds me of the need to always read the fine print and/ or footnotes.