Heh. I was sort of thinking that too. In fact I was sure the story was going to conclude how they bought the Middle Eastern mystery fat-food (call it Khlav Kalash), and it was the best thing they’d ever tasted, but they never saw this place again and have never figured out what it was they ate.
But no, having had the mystery food trailer with the near-nonsensical menu appear from nowhere and had the surreal moment of standing in front of a silently expectant vendor blaring incomprehensible techno music… they just walked away? :eek: :rolleyes:
I guess that’s why they’re in New Jersey! D&R
Seriously though – some of the best Middle Eastern food I’ve ever had was something I still don’t know what it was, I walked into a random place with nearly everything written in Arabic off Atlantic Avenue 12 years ago and equally randomly pointed at something on the menu, after some gesturing and inconsistent English translating by the guy behind the grill (by which I don’t mean a cooking surface: the counter was a metal fence with a slot in it). I asked what three different things were made of, then went back and asked about item #1 again, then #2, then back to #1. Two of the three times (the first and third time) I was told item #1 involved “goat”, though the middle time “chicken” was the answer. I think it was goat because I eat chicken prepared in many different ways and brother, this wasn’t chicken!
I wouldn’t say that’s a weird thing that happened to me, though – basically I sought it out, so it shouldn’t count. Hmmm… Maybe the time I was eating at a Chinese restaurant where the people a few tables over screamed and claimed they’d found a roach in their food (a stir-fried meat and vegetable dish) that then ran off.
This was at a restaurant where at least 80% of the patrons were Chinese, including the complainant. The manager came over and started arguing back, saying that this had to be some kind of trick or lie, to either extort a free meal or money out of them. Because obviously, if a roach had been cooked in the food it would be dead, and what were the chances a live roach would just lie quietly in a pile of food brought in from the kitchen until they’d eaten about a quarter of the stuff? Maybe they brought the roach in themselves! The nerve!
This whole thing began and escalated in (Mandarin) Chinese (which I speak). Interestingly enough, none of the Chinese patrons in the restaurant (including me and my own family) were very much deterred in eating our own food while this was going on, while the non-Chinese patrons, of course, didn’t know what was going on.
Then, the complainer made the strategic move to switch into English to press his case. “It was a roach,” he said suddenly. “There was a roach in my food!” He said this loudly enough that I could overhear from the next table, but only loudly enough that the closest non-Chinese diners a few more tables over could just make note of the fact that English was now being spoken, but not make out the words. You could tell they had, too: they’d been looking over amusedly, but now were looking over in a more curious and interested manner.
Boy, did the manager change his tune. First he protested (in Chinese) “Hey now, why speak in English all of a sudden?” Then as the complainant continued to repeat (more loudly and still in English) about “the roach”, the manager pulled him by the arm towards the corner of the room. The complainant pulled his arm free and demanded to know (now in Chinese again) what the manager was going to do about it.
The manager pulled the guy closer and spoke low enough that even we at the next table couldn’t hear any more, and they did go into a corner, and soon the table was cleared and the complaining party left without any further trouble.
My Mom was pretty sure this was a Chinese Mafia “shakedown”, and I’m pretty sure she was right.