It happened AGAIN!
On Sunday, October 27, the "restaurant gods" got another piece of me. It was my day off. I needed to run some errands, including a grocery run and a much-overdue haircut. I have ridiculous red hair that can turn into a Brillo pad nightmare if not slashed-and-burned regularly. It's a bad idea to go grocery shopping when you're hungry, and I had the bright idea to go to what used to be my favorite Chinese buffet near me: this little place in Ozark, Missouri called "China House". It's a small, family-operated Asian food place owned by some folks from Vietnam (if I recall correctly) where the chicken has always been remarkably good and the crab rangoon & egg rolls are excellent. Maybe that's just my unfortunately high tolerance for MSG talking, but there's a reason they have stayed in business for so long in a small "cow town" like Ozark, where a couple of other similar places there have failed. And I was really in the mood for "Chinese" food... or the American perception of it at any rate... so it was off to China House for lunch.
Yet upon my arrival, the joint's only apparent employee meets me right at the door, as if hoping I won't enter the building any further, and tells me right in front of the handful of other diners that were already seated nearby and eating, "Oh, I'm very sorry, but we want to close early, so we have not put out any fresh food on the buffet, and what there is there probably isn't any good anymore, but, if you really want something specific, maybe I can get it for you." Her exact words.
I was, uh, rather taken aback by that. What the heck...?? I think I said something brilliant and profound, like, "...uh, okay...?"
She then asks me what I'd like to drink.
"Um, sweet tea, would be fine." (It's a Southern thing; don't judge.)
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she replies immediately, not skipping a beat, "but our sweet tea here is very, very sweet. You probably won't like it. But maybe I can dilute it with some of our unsweetened tea, for you?"
Okay, at this point, I was pretty floored. I'm not making any of this up!! What in the blue blazes was going on?? Did I have a "danger, do not feed this person" sign on my forehead?? Was it "beware of soulless gingers day"? (Thank you oh-so-much for that, Southpark TV show.) The actually-soulless-seeming other diners seated nearby, unshaven and dressed in stained cow-farm clothes (so what gives...? I was better dressed than that, yet I'm being encouraged to leave?) were easily within earshot of this incredibly bizarre exchange, and yet they just kept shoveling the "not fresh anymore food" into their faces and wouldn't look up. Did they mistake me for some street bum who they expected to not pay? I've been in that restaurant dozens of times, and have been served by that very same girl, so it's not like I was some random unknown "variable" who just showed up like an unwelcome in-law. Just...what gives??
In retrospect, it felt very much like being treated like an unwanted homeless person who'd just wondered into an expensive department store which somehow knows you can't pay for anything. I assure you, I was not "unkempt-looking".
I was too weirded-out to have the presence of mind to ask why on earth I was being treated like this. Rather than tell her how utterly ridiculous this was, I just said, "Um, you know, maybe I'll just come back some other time" (when I should have said, "ya know, maybe I'll just leave the most colorfully bad review on Yelp that Western civilization has ever beheld, and not spend money here again, ever") and I left. I heard her go, "okay, so sorry" right before the door clanged shut behind me.
That's too bad; I liked the food there...but I'll never be going back, except perhaps with a big can of gasoline and a box of matches.
(Just kidding. Sort of.)
I still wanted Chinese buffet, though. Cashew chicken was invented in Springfield; Chinese buffets are popular around here. So I fell back on "Plan B", and drove well out of my way to visit the Asian King Buffet, in Springfield, Missouri.
I was welcomed readily into this somewhat larger and more-trafficked establishment (in a bigger town, and all) where the food is slightly less flavorful in my opinion, but it still checked the box for what I feel that a middle-America Chinese food bar would offer to the average, not-well-traveled Midwesterner such as myself. No one looked at me like I was a panhandler or a burn victim. So far, so good. I took my seat & texted my brother & sister with the mind boggling treatment I'd just received from China House. My brother has had his own bad experience there (in his case, China House simply seated him, then ignored him and left him to starve) and won't go back either. Now I see that I should have listened to him when he told me to avoid the place. I ate my lunch and I got up to pay...
And got overcharged. By a lot.
SIGH...
Why must I pay so much, I asked? Surely this is a mistake?
Come to find out, they'd picked that day to put shellfish and crab legs on the buffet, neither of which I touched, so they jacked up the price for that day only, and warned no one. I'm not allergic or religious; I just won't eat tentacles, or things with pincers or "Alien face-hugger legs", for the same darn good reasons H.P. Lovecraft wouldn't eat them. (That 1979 movie "Alien" should cure you of ever, ever wanting to eat crab legs.) My bill was 50% more than what I usually pay when I visit that same restaurant to abate the cost of this "exotic" food I won't even eat. Again, there is no warning, no "watch out, you will pay extra today-sign", no notice of any sort of this cash-grab by the restaurant upon one's entry into the place. You only find this out when they violate your debit card for it like a sudden, forcible prostate exam before you can leave.
Why, restaurant gods, why?!?
This reminds me of a quick story: a couple of years ago I was in that very same restaurant with my sister & her family when a well dressed, well-to-do couple in their 60s paid their bill, prepared to leave, and then randomly decided to walk back inside...they went to our table out of all the tables in the then-crowded place...and right in front of everyone, stepped over to me and handed me the fortune cookies they'd been given after paying for their meal. Inexplicably, these two absolute strangers deigned to inform me (at some length) that I somehow needed the fortune cookies they'd just been handed more than they did, and that "I really should have them" (their very words), before they finally left...embarrassing me to death in front of everyone.
It was infuriating, humiliating, and deeply bizarre all at the same time. I assure you that I didn't look homeless and desperate then, either. Perhaps they thought my sister & her family were only there to treat some random unemployed person (with thick, manly, red hair) to a free meal, so they thought they'd "chip in, too"? Otherwise, why would a sad wretch such as I be sitting at a table eating food with 4 other people; thus, I must surely need cookies?? Just, what gives??
I'm not making any of this up.
Ha ha...this is starting to paint a picture in your mind that I must be utterly unaware of how unwholesome & impoverished I must appear to others, isn't it? I certainly did not look destitute enough that day that my very life expectancy might hang in the balance of whether or not I happened to have an emergency fortune cookie in my pocket. ("Sure you didn't, John...") My sister says I overreacted when I expressed my outrage at this after the two condescending buffoons walked out, all confident in their self righteousness.
But...you had to be there! The sheer arrogance of their bearing and tone as they "generously donated" their bloody fortune cookies, in front of the whole restaurant, nearly dropping them into my very lunch plate. What if I was diabetic, and couldn't eat them? What if I'd offered to shove both cookies up their condescending, demeaning tailpipes with a big wooden chopstick? That will have to remain one of life's little mysteries, I guess. But, tell me: what would your reaction have been to something like this? Let me know in the comments. Very same restaurant, so you'd think I'd learn!
Friends... Can you please, please, please tell me WHAT IN THE HECK IS IT with me and Asian restaurants? (I got a cold shoulder like this from an Asian buffet called "Diamond Head" in Harrison, Arkansas once, too. Everyone stared at me right when I walked in there this one day, and just...glared at me without saying a word until I left, as if I'd just walked into some secret cult meeting and they were silently telling me that if I didn't GET OUT, I'd wind up on the menu. This might not count however, since that entire town is a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". Don't get me started.) Is it the red hair? Something about my face? If you are a prophet, preacher, priestess, or prognosticator, kindly consult your higher powers or your tea leaves and please tell me in the comments what on earth it is I must do to enjoy lunch at a restaurant, any restaurant, without these endless confrontations from the Twilight Zone. As it is, this basically strikes out the only two Chinese buffet places near me that I will eat at.
By the way...this ordeal meant that I ultimately had just missed the business hours at the only barber shop that is open near me on Sundays, and I never got my haircut that day. I got it the next day instead, tipped the nice girl who had to sheep-shear my head an extra ten bucks for her labors, then I went to lunch at a Subway next door...where I had a surprisingly drab sandwich served by a rude, standoff-ish brat who seemed to think I was interrupting her workplace social life.
I'm cursed. That's it, isn't it? That's gotta be it!