My friends and I were in Paducah, KY for a political get-together, and after a long day of stump speeches, we were hungry. My two friends are vegan, and I am vegetarian, so we were looking for a place to eat. We tried one place we'd found online, but it was a health food store. We decided to wing it and drop by a Chinese restaurant, as they tend to have at least a few options.
Okay. So this restaurant was completely empty -- we were the only people eating there. They had to turn on the lights to the dining room. That should have been a sign, but we were tired and hungry, and weren't looking forward to wandering around to look for another restaurant. The restaurant didn't take credit cards or non-local checks (bad sign #2), so we counted our collective cash and figured we could share two entrees. There was one dish -- Buddha's Delight, that was a vegetable dish with bok choy, snow peas, broccoli, and mushrooms. We asked if we could get veggie Chow Mein -- not listed on the menu, but they said they could do it.
We get our water, and after about fifteen minutes we get... our food?
Plate one, the "Buddha's Delight," consisted of seventy percent celery, some carrots, two broccoli, and a few sad water chestnuts in a brown goopy sauce. The "Chow Mein" was a plate of celery in clear sauce with some crunchy noodles over the top.
Yup, $12.25 for two plates of celery.
It was so bizarre. I figure they just didn't have anything else in the kitchen. We didn't get any water service, and no-one checked up on us, even though we were the only ones in the dining area and there were more staff people than people dining.
We were starving, and figured they didn't have anything else to serve us, so we ate, and left without a tip.
Maybe we stumbled across a front for the Chinese mafia?
