scat

"One of my most memorable calls was also one of the grossest. It was a fetish call. A scat fetish.
I started out by telling him I was a vegan. I cracked him up. He was laughing so hard, he had to hang up because he couldn’t get back into our fantasy."
- anon, 'A Look In The Lives Of Phone Sex Operators' on hemmy.net, 22 June 2008.

And they probably serve food in those annoying plastic baskets my brother hates.

nested...quotes...headache...

I guess they could have called it "Food 'n' Scram." Or, you know, taken that opportunity to not annoy skipvia, and do away with the dumb "'n'" there.

Though I'm willing to bet they didn't even spell "'n'" right. I bet they spelled it "'n.'" Or "n." Or even "-n-".

Bastids.

Oh. Well, now you've spoiled the fun, skipvia. ;-)

I'm sure the owners of "Food 'n' Scat" meant that you could eat and get out quickly, but the mental image was something entirely other.

So maybe Food 'n' Scat served...uh...the sharp sound of bullets?

I agree on the 'n' thing, too, skipvia. I once came across a restaurant called Eat 'n' Go. I decided not to take the chance.

Other meanings (besides specific excrement) from the OED:

Obsolete/rare: Treasure, money; in ME. only in phr. scat and s(c)rud.

Obsolete/rare: Treasure. (single usage listed is from 1481. Woooo!)

1. a. gen. A tax, tribute. Now only Hist. with reference to countries under Scandinavian rule.
b. In Orkney and Shetland, the land-tax paid to the Crown by a udal tenant. Also, in certain parts of Scotland and the north of England, the designation of various local imposts in the 15-17th c.
2. attrib., as scat-field, tax; scat gild, the payment or tax of ‘scat’; scat haver, malt, oats, malt, taken in payment of ‘scat’; scat land, land subject to ‘scat’.

Dialect.
1. A blow or buffet.
2. ‘Anything burst or broken open; the sound of a rent; the sharp sound of a bullet’ (E.D.D.). Cf. SCAT v.3 and adv.
3. A brief spell of weather; a short turn of work.
4. A sudden or passing shower of rain.

Slang.
U.S., for whiskey.

Jazz.
a. A style of improvised singing in which meaningless but expressive syllables, usu. representing the sound of a musical instrument, are used instead of words.
b. Comb., as scat-singing n., singing in this style; also as adj.; hence scat-singer and (as a back-formation) scat-sing v. trans. and intr.

Slang.
Heroin.

There are a number of definitions of "scat" as a verb as well.

Obsolete: To oppress by exactions.
Obsolete: In phrase to scat and lot (later to scat or contribute) = ‘to scot and lot’, i.e. to contribute equally to the defraying of some charge or cost.
Dialect: To break in pieces, shatter.

Jazz: a. To perform scat-singing; to sing or improvise with meaningless syllables.
b. To sing or improvise (a song) by replacing the words by meaningless syllables.

Dial. to go scat: to fall down; to break in pieces; to become bankrupt.

And finally, colloquial: Begone! Hence used as verb (intr.). Also in phr. quicker than scat.

Ha! Skipvia, you must be a kindred spirit. (I'm purposely not going to add that phrase or even see if it's already been added, out of courtesy to seanahan so he can have some more words.) Although, I was very surprised to see several unrelated meanings for "scat" in the OED! Maybe the restaurant owners were using it in a different sense...?

Still... dumb name for a restaurant.

And I forgot to mention that I absolutely despise store names with 'n' in them. Like "Junk 'n' Stuff"...

You'll enjoy this one, c_b. Near where I grew up in SC was a diner named "Food 'n' Scat." I never could get up the courage to go in there.

According to the OED, "scat" in the sense of "excrement" is not all that specific: "dung. (pl.) droppings."

Usages: 1977 Devon Wetlands (Devon County Council) xix. 74 "The two signs of Otters most likely to be found are their footprints and their droppings (usually known as scats or spraints)... Recognising spraints requires some practice particularly to avoid confusing them with Mink scats.

1977 New Yorker 27 June 70/3 We avoid a mound of bear scat.