One of the great mysteries of yelping is the phenomenon of how your expectations of a place effect your eventual rating. If I have high expectations for a place and they aren't met, is that the reason I rate something lower? Is it really an accurate rating if I have expectations that exceed the ability to be met? On the other hand, should a place get a high rating because my low expectations were met or exceeded?
Well folks, with those burning mysteries in mind, picture this: a chinese food joint that looks to be in a condemned building, surrounded by empty parking lot during the lunch rush, a partially handwritten menu, and A DRIVE THRU. DRIVE. THRU.
What type of expectations would you have for this place? That the food be merely means to an end? The end being a bowel movement? A little higher? A little lower? Maybe you were expecting a fortune cookie, they can't screw that up, right? A spork, that most favored of chinese food eating utensils?
I bravely sidled up to the drivethru menu, and ordered the "special combo" allegedly with general tso's chicken, fried rice, and egg rolls. After driving up to the window I noticed the sole patrons inside the restaurant were two women who seemed to be enjoying themselves, although I can't recall if they were actually eating or had not received their food yet. Most likely they were in some type of euphoric trance preceding death.
I paid the nice lady and got my food in a lovely foam container to take back to my place and eat. I am one of those "purchase lookers", even though I know what I bought I still like to look at it once I get it within my possession, not to eat it, just to check it out and see what all is there. I do this with clothes, food, everything. My most favorite thing to do when driving home from the mall is to dump out everything I just bought in my car and rehash the shopping trip and discuss my purchases with my unwilling passenger. Alas, I digress.
I resisted the urge to look at the food, knowing that if I didn't like what I saw before eating it, it would taint this very yelp review. I got home, immediately sat down, opened my box of food, and...
You know yelpers, I would never lie to you, I may have delusions of grandeur, but I will never lie about food and/or services I review. So you will believe me when I say:
...this food was radioactive colored. Like nuclear waste colored. The lo mein was neon yellow, and the chicken was neon orange. My eggroll sauce literally seared my retinas with how bright it was. I am actually the type of person that gets really excited about things such as this, because I love telling stories about it later to impress my friends. For some people, it's doing extreme sports and then waxing poetically about being close to death... for me, it's eating questionable food and then describing the experience to you poor saps.
I did not die after eating the first bite, or the second, or the third. The chicken was really tasty, the eggrolls were expertly fried, and the rice was edible. The nuclear lo mien left alot to be desired. The radioactive eggroll sauce was THE BOMB! (ha, see what I did there?)
I wanted to write the review AS I WAS EATING THE MEAL... which would have been so amazingly hardcore. There is probably an award for that. But then I got to thinking... what if I die after posting it and now all of these people think that this chinese drive thru that just murdered me is a good place to eat? There would be no one to refute my story... I could not let this be. So I resolved to review the place EXACTLY 24 hours later, after all reasonable suspicion of death by chinese food were gone.
This was by far the most exhilarating mediocre chinese food I have ever eaten, for reasons stated above. It's not fresh, it's definitely not healthy, but it's damn good and you don't have to get out of your car to get it. The drive thru thing should be reason enough to give this place a try and impress your friends with your extreme eating adventures. read more