Whenever I return from a trip from California, I am always surprised at the number of people who ask whether I visited the palace of hamburgers known as In-N-Out. I’m not much of a burger fan, so my trips to that establishment are rare. I try, however, never to miss a trip to El Pollo Loco, one of my favorite restaurants on the planet.

At this point in my life, part of my love of El Pollo Loco stems from its rarity – I only get to have it when I visit my family and friends on the West Coast, and absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. Imagine my surprise and delight then, when I learned that El Pollo Loco is learning to expand to Minnesota. I learned about this last week, when El Pollo Loco sued a local Minneapolis restaurant purportedly operating as El Pollo Loco De Los Santos. The lawsuit alleges that the latter restaurant continues to use the term “Loco” in its name even though El Pollo Loco requested that El Pollo Loco De Los Santos cease use of the term, or any other mark confusingly similar, in 2008.