There's a small, half-formed grocery store down the road from me. It has pretensions of being a much bigger, more important store than it actually is, and I like their selection of produce. Plus, it's refrigerated and air-conditioned.
So, I was at this supermarket today, and outside the supermarket is a restaurant called Black Canyon Coffee, which apparently serves Thai-Western fusion food despite its Wild West logo (even though this is Cambodia and all.) Because I was in the middle of an intense sugar crash at the time (this was like 11 am because my digestion is so pathetic these days) I sat down and ordered food. Most of it is ridiculously cheap, and I guess what you pay for is what you get.
It was so nice: a large pork chop and fries, a small salad, and four little squares of toast--all for $3.95. I took one bite of the pork and discovered a young cockroach, broken up and flattened, lying just under the slab of meat.
As someone who habitually eats the ants that get into her sugar, I was less troubled about the fact that there was a roach under my pork chop, than I was troubled by the question, Why there was a roach under my pork chop.
If it were a fly, that would be understandable. Flies get into things. The same with ants--I haven't met a person in this city who doesn't have a problem with the ants. Moreover, having worked in a bakery, I know that insects can get into flour and grains sometimes.
But a cockroach? On a pork chop? That's a pretty serious health violation there!
I stared at it so long that finally the wait staff came over (like literally the entire wait staff).
I pointed to the roach and simply said, "This is not good."
Waiter (after sheepishly taking the plate of rejected food): "We are SO SORRY. Would you like to try something else?"
Me: "No. I really don't. In fact, I don't ever want to eat anything from here again."
And so saying, I backed slowly towards the door, then walked out the door, down the road, and directly to the bottle of antibiotics sitting on my dresser. Because lord knows what else that poor pork chop, plate, fries, or salad had on it.*
The moral of this story is, Don't eat at Black Canyon Coffee.
*This is actually the first egregious violation of health standards I have encountered in my 7+ months here.
I only know that sometimes Cambodians eat fried crickets or spiders, but a cockroach? I laughed the whole time I read this, but the Black Canyon really deserved the blame.
ReplyDeleteWell, even I'm a Cambodian, I've never tasted insects before, and even if I do, a cockroach is the last thing I would order in my pork chop!
Lol, I'll eat literally anything, but I draw the line at a cockroach on my pork chop.
ReplyDeleteThe problem wasn't so much the roach itself as it was the fact that there really must be some pretty dirty stuff happening in the kitchen for it to have gotten there to begin with.
Whatever. I hope anyone who looks up "Black Canyon Coffee" will find this entry and know not to eat there.