That last sentence hit it all. The problem is that most restaurant owners are drawn to the flashy (and Flashy), and they're usually going for the expensive Flashturbation as a business deduction on taxes. It never occurs to them that the Flash makes it absolutely impossible for anyone other than the designer to update the site, say with menu or hours changes, because they've forgotten all about the site the moment they can put the URL on the menu.

What's really sad is when you see still-running sites for places that are long-dead. I call these sites "mummyware", because they're definitely dead but well-preserved. My wife and I found a great Turkish restaurant last June that was so good that she wanted to have her fortieth birthday party there. I spent a month calling and E-mailing to set up a reservation, only to receive no response. We finally drove out there, and discovered that the landlord had changed the locks precisely two days after we ate there. You'd have never known this from the Web site, that's for sure.