Grub Hub-Bub

There is a pizza place down in my home town that everybody in the southern end of Cook County go goofy over. I'll call it Pizza Place 'A'. My youngest sister orders pizza from there when she visits my mom. Sister number four, I believe, also orders from Pizza Place 'A'. Over the last forty years all I ever hear when visiting Tinley Park is how much everybody loves 'A' pizzas. So everybody calls 'A' to get a pizza delivered. When Mark and I were visiting Tinley Park one afternoon, we decided to try 'A' pizza place. But instead of ordering one delivered, we went to the actual pizza restaurant. Big mistake. The interior was dark and foreboding, and I imagined all kinds of dirty things in the dark corners of the dining room.  We were seated by the 'hostess' who I think doubled as a bus boy. As I sat down I ran my fingers over the top of the table. It was tacky, almost gooey. In fact every surface in the place was like that. Everything in the place seemed dirty and old. The salad bar was nasty looking, and the pizza did not live up to what I had expected. I'm pretty sure all those people raving about Pizza Place 'A' only have it delivered and never have set foot in the place.

Last night Mark and I ordered Chinese food from a restaurant about a mile away. We've ordered from there before and the food is good, and the portions enormous. However, the last time we ordered there was a snag. It took us two hours to get our food delivered. So I drove over there and picked it up myself this time. When I got there, I walked up to the front window and looked in. There were about eight tables with nobody seated at any of them, except for the one against the wall. A homeless man was sleeping at that table. The windows were filthy, the floor hadn't been mopped in years, and the lighting was that harsh fluorescent that makes everybody look dangerous. I went in and picked up our food. It was just as good as when we had it delivered to our door. However, I'm not sure if I can order from there again. I'll be thinking of that homeless guy, the dirty windows and floors, and the general disturbing ambiance of the place while I wolf down my sweet and sour pork. So there is a lesson that I learned from these two incidents. No, not check out a place before you order food to be delivered. The lesson is, don't ever go snooping around the place you order your food from if you want to keep getting food from that place.