Nature of the Offense
I expect a lot of my readers do some business travel, especially for professional conferences. So many of you are probably familiar with the trappings of the Great American Convention Center. It's basically a suburb minus the rustic, homely charm. Everything is built with cardboard, completely devoid of any soul or individuality, and outrageously expensive. Such is the case with National Harbor, Maryland, a barren strip of dirt just south of Washington, D.C. that some enterprising young asshole decided to bulldoze and put a disposable hotel on top of. It took me no time at all to start referring to it as Dirt Harbor, a name more appropriate than I initially realized; if you read the Wikipedia article linked in the last sentence, you'll see that they've made fast friends with the Sierra Club by dumping hundreds of thousands gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac. This was no surprise to me, as the whole place was about as green as a brick.
Anyway, I'm rambling. I got roped into eating at a shitty, overpriced Chinese restaurant at the center, and got mild food poisoning. I wrote this letter between dry heaves.
The Letter
Dear Grace,
The home page of your website shows a picture of chopsticks attempting to pick up a single grain of uncooked rice. Your web designer must have had an experience similar to mine in your restaurant, because I cannot think of a more appropriate image to convey the frustration of dining at your establishment. And you probably don't care, because your customer base consists almost entirely of business travelers who will pay their 50 bucks a head because they're stuck in Dirt Harbor, Maryland and never come back. But I'm still going to send you this litany of complaints, if for no other reason than my own satisfaction.
Seriously, this is supposed to make me want Chinese food?
You use a Chinese character in your signage near the front door. Do you know what it means? I expect that super-trustworthy guy at the tattoo parlor told you it means "grace"--and he wasn't totally lying--but, like your web designer, he was trolling you too. You see, while that character is occasionally used to mean "grace," its more common translation in China is "expensive." Like a Kardashian, you have clearly confused the two, but the end result is hilariously more appropriate than you probably intended. You charge 40 dollars for a plate of crab cakes with asparagus, which might not be outrageous in some circumstances. But when the food arrived, the crab cakes were smaller, less fresh, and contained less crab than the cakes we got for free from the sports bar at the convention center the night before. And the three spears of asparagus were like a bad joke. I've had seven-dollar appetizers from Applebee's that were more filling and tastier than that entree.
It means "General Tso's is not Chinese food."
Let's talk more about your advertising. Your website describes an "intimate" lounge, which is where my friends and I were seated. Tell me, how much should the music be allowed to shake the table in order for the setting to remain "intimate?" When I think of an "intimate lounge," I imagine tinkling pianos, indoor voices, and high-priced prostitutes. What we got was more like a Jersey Shore dance club. The pounding electronic music was so loud I had to shout to the person sitting next to me, and when it was my turn to order I simply held up my menu and pointed. The only thing "intimate" about our dining experience was dessert. We ate cookies in our hotel room.
I actually shouldn't have complained too much earlier about the small portion size. Because starting about 20 minutes after dinner, I wasn't hungry again for about a week. Of course, that's because something I ate at your fine establishment had approximately the same effect as applying a vice grip to my stomach. Speaking with a few other people who ate there that week, it sounds like I wasn't alone in experiencing a bit of intestinal misery after enjoying your cuisine. But hey, I didn't touch my per diem for the rest of the trip, which my employer loved. So thanks for that, I guess!
All of Arrested Development is an inside joke, so why shouldn't this picture be?
The great American war hero Colonel H. D. Sanders once said "You can be expensive, or you can be of poor quality, but I'm too drunk to finish this sentence." I think what he was trying to say is that if you want to be that shady Chinese joint around the corner that always avoids a failing sanitation grade by the skin of its teeth, fine. But don't play yourself up like some happening D.C. lounge where Congressmen take their underage pages to get them drunk, and charge prices to match.
Sincerely,
Angry Customer
The Response
As has become the norm around here, I got absolutely nothing back from Grace. Since I'm sure this is just because she's very busy, I took the liberty of writing the response letter myself, being pretty sure of what the message is here. With Grace being such a fan of half-assed Chinese translation, I used Google Translate to provide the authenticity that Grace's is so well known for.
