Friday, January 6, 2012

How do I really feel?

(Please to note: I may have a teensy bit of difficulty remembering what, precisely, I ordered at Chin's Kitchen.  It's been several months since I ate there--time I've mostly spent trying to block the memory--and fucked if I'm going to repeat the experience for the Internet's sake.  Now, onward!)

Imagine, if you will, a locker room.  The specifics are unimportant, just your stereotypical, garden-variety locker room.  The sort in which all the traditional locker-room activities took place--the communal showers, the storage of damp clothing, the wet-towel-snapping ass-torment, the semi-public-nudity-emboldened braggadocio, all of it.  Imagine that this locker room functioned for many, many years, literal decades of black mold and simmering homoeroticism, before finally closing, at which point it sat empty for several more years, just to make extra-sure the fungi had taken root.  Finally, imagine that someone or someones came along and decided, without so much as setting mop to tile, that this locker room would make a fantastic Chinese restaurant.

You can stop imagining now, because now you have Chin's Kitchen.

Chin's Kitchen is the sort of place where, upon setting foot inside the doors, your first thought is this is gonna suck.  Most sensible people, upon finding themselves in this situation, do the sensible thing--turn on their heel and go eat at Shandong instead.

Very rarely have I been accused of being sensible.

Yes, I walked into Chin's Kitchen, saw the state of the place, knew on the spot what I was in for--and sat down and ordered something anyway.  Call me stupid if you like--I prefer to think of myself as an optimist.  First impressions have led me astray in the past, after all.  Hell, for the first several months of its existence I was convinced Sizzle Pie was a strip club.  I must have been in a forgiving mood that day, because I ordered a combo platter, was presented with a pile of hot garbage and I STILL ate it.

And garbage it was--canned/bagged storebought garbage, from the looks of it.  Canned water-chestnut slices are never a welcome sight in my eyes, and yet here were the little frozen-jizz slices infesting my chow mein without so much as a by-your-leave.  The chow mein's "noodles" were those awful rock-hard brown things (like fossilized goldfish shit) only crappy Chinese restaurants buy, despite their near-ubiquity in the "ethnic foods" section of your local supermarket.  Gluing it all together into one gelid mass was a gravy best likened to thick, gluey phlegm fresh from the lung.

So, bad fucking food is what I'm getting at.  Almost as bad as the decor.  There's no reason for this place to exist, not when GOOD chinese food is less than a mile away.  Surely you can walk that far--nobody's THAT American.

No comments:

Post a Comment