Of styrofoam and swap meets

Model Airplane swap meet in a strange town means lunch at a new Chinese restaurant!


So after I had seen everything I wanted at the swap meet (I deliberately hung around until lunch) I went out on the town in search of a Chinese place. I had eaten at a really good one in this town before (Murfreesboro, TN) but doubted I would find it again since I was coming in from another part of town and it’s pretty large at that. My criteria was simply that I would stop at the first place I could find. I was in the “uptown” section and had to wander several miles till I hit the seedy part of town and swung in abruptly towards my target. It was right at lunchtime and I wandered in to realize I was the only one there except for the guys who worked there. Didn’t take long to realize that the kid behind the counter didn’t want to be there either. He was punching the computer screen while taking my order like he wanted to kill that thing. I sat down and started taking in the ambiance around me.



It was hot in there, smoky, dingy, and somewhat dirty. There were huge old calendars hung on the walls with pictures of Asian girls on them. The window shades were dirty and the table was greasy. I began to suspect I could have chosen a little more wisely but you never know about these places. The best ones are those hole in the walls that look like they should have been shut down by the board of health. My ace in the hole was the guy doing the cooking. He was the real thing. The typical Chinese restaurant has 1 Chinese woman running the cash register and a herd of Mexicans doing everything else, including the cooking. I don’t like that. And those are the places that have a huge buffet complete with pizza, tacos, and French fries. Not me.

So after a lengthy wait, my soup arrived. Funny that the guy who was doing the cooking brought it to me instead of the kid at the cash register. Maybe the kid got disgusted and went home. Soup wasn’t bad but nothing to write home about. When the rest of lunch finally showed up the cook brought it out himself again. Only my tea wasn’t there.

I asked the cook to please bring me my tea. He said, “Ohhhh, you order tea?!!!!” “Youwah sweet tea”?!!!!!! He was really loud and his accent was right off the boat. I told him I would rather have unsweet tea. He then said, “youwah hot tea”?!!!! Oh yes! Hot tea would be excellent. The guy then brings me a Styrofoam cup of tea with a lid on it that was two sizes too large and tells me to keep lid on.

The meal was pretty good. I had broccoli with hot sauce, an egg roll, and rice. The egg roll was really fresh and the rice was the pork fried variety. I typically don’t go in for fried rice but this was great! It had lots of bits and pieces off all kinds of stuff in it. The broccoli was pretty good but a little too greasy for me.

The kicker was the tea. After I was finished eating, I took the lid off the cup and looked down into it. I drive Kathy nuts when we go out to eat Chinese because I always finish my meal with tea and make her sit there forever while I enjoy it. Anyway, Instead of finding the typical Lipton tea bag (yuck) I was shocked to find a few tea leaves in the bottom. It was really good too.

I waved and said good bye to the cook and walked out of there with my tea and a big smile on my face.