The saddest restaurant ad, ever.

We were looking through a local paper and saw an ad for a restaurant that used to be one of our very favorites – but seems to have lost its way over the last eighteen months.

(We no longer recommend it in Top Maui Restaurants, and you can read the details, if you must, in the 2010 edition.)

Maui is a small island, and we’re not going to publish the restaurant’s name here, because it’s not a happy story. But we can’t help but point out that if you are no longer the great restaurant you once were, you should probably avoid acknowledging it publicly – especially in an advertisement that you pay for.

The text of the ad reads like this:

“Previously Voted Best ‘Seafood, Service, and Overall’ by Maui News Readers”