So it’s last saturday night and GonzoGal and I are out with her family and hungry. Chinese food is suggested.
We hop out into a local takeout place and start looking at the menu. GonzoGal notices her brother staring shocked at something, she looks into the kitchen area where he’s looking and blurts out, “What is that guy doing?” I look up in time to see one of the cooks cutting his hand with a kitchen knife. WTF?!?!?
The lady behind the counter yells something at him in Chinese, and he tosses the knife out of sight sheepeshly.
GonzoGal: “Can we leave?”
Me: “Uh huh.”
I still don’t know what the hell he was doing. Maybe lancing a boil or scraping off a callous, or maybe commiting suicide. In any case, we’re not eating there again.
(The funny part is my MIL was wary of going there because of SARS :rolleyes: and we had to convince her that it was safe and healthy to eat there. Guess we were wrong.)
So to the fuckwit that would have prepared my triple jade in garlic sauce with a bloody knife: a hearty fuck you!
(and another mild pitting from me. I’m working my way up. At least it’s better than the starburst rant.)
I used to work at a company that made nutritional supplements. One day, I was walking past the inspection line, where workers sit over conveyer belts, watching the capsules go by, pulling out bad ones. The belts have little mirrors on them, so the workers can see all sides of the capsules without having to crane their necks. On this day, I noticed one lady who was bent over looking at herself in the mirror, popping zits as the capsules went by underneath her.
Smeghead’s charming story about Vitamin Pus makes me reflect that there are some areas of ignorance that are better unfought. For instance, I never want to know what manner of substances I may have unknowingly ingested.
It was a pretty small place, you’re typical hole in the wall, chinese food place. Counter across the room, pictures and menu above, guys with woks (and knives) in the back. 3 or 4 tables. I assume the lady who yelled at him was the manager, and that our “What is that guy doing!?” and walking out without ordering informed her of our displeasure. We were the only customers, so there was no one else to point him out to.
As for informing the health department, yeah, we probably should, but it’s our word against theirs, unless the inspector happens to drop by while he’s practicing ritual scarification again.
Oh, and BTW, while I had the same gut reaction, please, go out and eat Chinese food. No reason to lump all chinese restaurants together due to one place’s repulsiveness. Just don’t go to the one in Flushing NY, near the Pathmark and next to the Subway and Dunkin Donuts. (Go to their competition over by the Blockbuster instead.)
This was a few years ago, but a vehicle bearing the logo of a nearby Chinese restaurant was seen lifting a roadkill deer from the side of the road. The observer notified the local health department. An agent went to the restaurant and sure enough, there in the kitchen was the deer carcass being butchered. The perpetrators said they were planning just to use it for themselves, not to serve it, but since it was illegal for it to even be on the premises, they were at least temporarily shut down.
If the knife bothers you, don’t go to Bahrain. My ex wife and I lived there during the final days of our marriage. Everything had this doomed and damned feeling about it and I thought, “Aha! What she needs is some good Chines food to cheer her up and improve matters. Who knows, maybe we won’t even be divirced.” Well, so much for that idea. We were seated in a large, dimly lit room. The lighting was fluorescent tubes running around the perimeter of the ceiling with a yellow, plexiglass flitler below it. All is good, the soon-to-be ex is warming nicely and we are discovering things in common, things that we like. This evening is going to be a success!
Until she looked at the ceiling behind me and started screaming. There was a rat trying to crawl along the fluorescent tube. The animal was so fat that his legs stuck out almost horizontally and he kept falling off the tube and onto the plexiglass, raising expectations of a huge rat momentarily appearing in my plate.
End of the meal, end of the reconciliation. Ahh well.
When I lived in Charlottesville, VA., my next door neighbour and friend worked for the local health dept – she said they were constantly raiding the local Chinese places (her fave was going into one kitchen and shining a light into the ductwork over the stoves and seeing the 1000s of roaches scuttling away.)
She said that many times, esp with the smaller establishments, the owners/workers not only did have good English, but also a poor understanding that western standards of cleanliness in a kitchen were very different than their own (I have no verification that Chinese chinese kitchens, etc, are scary places – this is just 10 yr old hearsay). The health dept would try to be kind, esp if it were a first inspection, and even hired a translator, and would lay out very carefully what had to be changed – they also would have to explain how to effect the change, as they found out the people in the roach place were simply spraying Raid up into the ceiling, and the dead roaches were falling into saucepans, etc).
She said they would usually give the places 4-6 weeks to straighten out, and many would, in earnest, and then a few weeks later be back to the old situation – so the department would have to do random checks constantly…
To be fair (I love Chinese food myself!), western owned businesses were ‘interesting’ too (I once cut into a tortellini at an Italian spot, and discovered the tortellini was looking back at me…or at least the 2 inch long undercover moth was) – you do NOT want to know what she used to tell me about the local branches of the major supermarket chains…
Okay, okay- not all Chinese places are like this. Shouting “I’m never eating Chinese again!” is pretty childish. I am very good friends with a woman whose parents run a Chinese restaurant- a little hole-in-the-wall place with 4 guys in the back cooking and whoever speaks the best English working the register. I’ve been in those kitchens many times. I’ve seen the freezers, I’ve seen the place when it’s all dark, (no roaches or other vermin) I’ve been to her parents’ house and seen their own kitchen. It’s clean and well-run. They proudly display their certs from the BOH. They do not eat roadkill, they do not put bodily fluids into the food, there is no vast conspiracy to infect all the local round-eyes with a screaming case of e. coli. Don’t judge all Chinese restaurants because you’ve heard a few horror stories. There are plenty of restaurants run by people of the majority ethnic group that are every bit as disgusting and fucked-up. I’m sure somebody working the grill at one of the mega-conglomerate fast food chains will soon chime in with their own tales of terror. In fact, I’m willing to bet that any food you eat that you have not actually prepared yourself has had something done to it which you would really rather not know about. So calm down with the “those people” reactions and pick your food service providers with care.
Like I said, mentioning that it was a Chinese restaurant was just for the flavor of the story. It’s not at all relevant. There are horror stories in every type of food. It’s not safe to eat anywhere, yadda, yadda, yadda. disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer…
(I knew that naming the type of food had the potential to turn this from a hygene rant to a racism/counter-racism pile-on, so let’s just nip* that in the bud, shall we?)
*that’s nip, as in the verb, not as in the racial slur for Japanese people who, contrary to common wisdom, aren’t Chinese at all. See, now I’m covering my ass from all sides.
Heh heh. I recall one of the Chinese restaurants near my campus being busted. Apparently at that time, their method of thawing meat was to put it out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and run a hose over it :rolleyes:. However, they have reformed since those dark days, and the other Chinese restaurant nearby has always been very hygenic.
(Go to their competition over by the Blockbuster instead.)