Shanghai Surprise!

I've told this story a million times, but I recently discovered a menu in my glove box when I cleaned out the recently departed car, so one more time won't hurt...

When I was in college, as most college kids with no money did, we ate boat loads of crappy Chinese take-out.  Our favorite local haunt was just up the road from the university.  The place was awesome.  Housed in a defunct Hardee's fast food joint.  Delicious food, super cheap, gobs of glow in the dark sweet and sour sauce, and massive fountain drink cups for your takee outee pleasure.  We loved it.  Even when one of my dorm-mates found a sauteed cockroach in his pork-fried rice.  We still went back.  It was just a one time thing, right?  

We were young, stupid and poor.

And happy and well-fed on the cheap. 

We were college kids.

Try the won ton soup.  

Anyway, one day we went in a car load to the Express and sat down for a gorging of our favorite glow in the dark sweet and sour selection of choice. We filled our cups multiple times.  We ate until we bloated like dead cats in the road (foreshadowing).  We loved it.

Finally we meandered, stuffed to the gills in processed fast food, out to our car, parked in the back of the restaurant near the dumpster enclosure.  The dumpster was a nasty place, crawling with roaches which would scatter as we walked toward the block walls of the enclosure.  The smell was unimaginable.  

The sight was even worse.

Sitting there next to the dumpster wall was a U-Save grocery bag. Inside the grocery bag was something even more unspeakable than the dumpster smell or the pork-fried cockroach.

Three severed cat heads.

It was nasty.

It was gross.

It was horrific.

We were appalled. 

We were disgusted.

We returned for dinner 3 days later.  

Love that cheap Chinese take-out. 

Delicious.

Scene of the crime.

Today the place is much as it was when I frequented it.  I think it is closed, but it always looked like it was closed so who can tell?  The Dumpster enclosure is still there but mercifully the bag (or 'newer releases' of the bag!) is gone.

What of the cat heads?  Who knows!  They could have been dumped by a passerby and had nothing to do with the restaurant.  The outside of the place was in horrific condition and it would not surprise me to find out that no employee had been anywhere near the dumpster enclosure with the intent of cleaning up. The area was littered with stray cats, so some whack-job could have just been on a private vendetta cat-eradication-expedition.

Then again, they could have come straight from the kitchen.


In the end, we didn't care.



Yummy.



*meow*