Farhad Manjoo investigates:
[T]he best answer I found was this: Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant. "In restaurants, the expertise is in the kitchen and in hospitality in general," says Eng San Kho, a partner at the New York design firm Love and War, which has created several unusually great restaurant sites (more on those in a bit). "People in restaurants have a sense that they want to create an entertainment experience online—that's why disco music starts, that's why Flash slideshows open. They think they can still play the host even here online."
The above screenshot is from the website for Cavatore, an Italian restaurant in Houston "that hired Web designers who were either a) on a Monty Python-besotted acid trip, or b) looking to induce epileptic seizures."
The Dish 