I’ve eaten a lot of meals in a lot of gross restaurants over the years. I’ve traveled to a lot to odd places, and when I’m in the
A few years ago for Thanksgiving dinner I went to the Quaker Steak ‘N Lube: Best Wings USA with my friend, Perry. It was not my first choice for a Thanksgiving dinner, but every other pizza and Chinese delivery place, grocery store, and 7-11 had already shut down for the holiday. Perry and I had long ago been abandoned by our families and friends. We tried to go to La Bamba burritos, only to find old, gristled, chicken meat sitting behind the sneeze guard. It was not very appetizing to look at. The meat had clearly not been stirred around in awhile. We got pineapple sodas and left for the Quaker Steak ‘N Lube: Best Wings USA. Perry worked there, so we knew we could get a discount. It was either there or eating Thanksgiving dinner at a gas station.
The pineapple sodas we purchased were thick and gelatinous. With 250 calories and 58 grams of sugar per serving, it was more like a carbonated syrup. The enamel on my teeth was starting to dissolve. I would need a root canal.
The word “lube” should never be associated with food, especially not in the name of a restaurant that is trying to turn a profit. Quaker Steak ‘N Lube: Best Wings USA was probably a step below a Denny’s or a Perkins. It might as well have been a Waffle House, but with a liquor license. All employees wore green t-shirts identifying themselves as member of the pit crew. Televisions were everywhere and pointed in all directions, even embedded in the floor of the bathroom. There wasn’t a smoking section, but you could light up a
Inside the clientele depressed me. A few sad men were sitting alone on Thanksgiving eating greasy hamburgers and drinking cheap beer, watching pro football. Obese families were devouring mountains of chicken wings, staining their clothes in the process. There were probably more customers than teeth. Captain Morgan’s was the top shelf liquor.
We sat down in Thunder Alley and Perry lit a cigarette. I looked at the menu and lost my appetite: Dip Sticks, Lube Chips, Lubed Clam Chowder, Lube Cruisers, Lettuce Lubes, Lube Boneless Wing Salad, and, of course, the Lube Burger (”A Lube Legend!”). To drink you could get a Lube-N-Ade, and the menu offered that “SURE YOU CAN HAVE BROWN GRAVY ON THOSE!!”
We decided to split a Munch Bucket and a Mega Bucket of wings with Badger Barbecue sauce for the both of us. Perry ordered me a Lube Tube which, despite my protests that I wasn’t going to drink a lube of anything, turned out to be a yard of Miller Lite. It was alright. I drank it.
“Perry, what’s the difference between ‘white’ and ’skim’ milk on this menu? Shouldn’t all skim milk be white?”
“You’d think so, but not here.”
“Do some people here really order the half-pound hot dog?”
“Some people order two.”
Later that night Perry and I went to a friend’s house where a vegan Thanksgiving had just ended. We entered with our leftover wings still in their grease-soaked bucket, breaking open the bones and sucking out the marrow like cavemen. They were pretty good wings.
We played Trivial Pursuit with his friends, and after each round they would comment that each answer was also the name of a punk band.
“What animal is used as an allusion to burden by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?”
“Albatross.”
“Oh, that’s the name of a really good punk band.”
“What play by William Shakespeare is the shortest tragedy he penned?”
“MacBeth.”
“Oh, that’s also the name of a really good punk band.”
Leonard, the cat who lived in the house, stole a chicken wing from the bucket and ate the whole thing. A couple of minutes later he started moaning and threw up on the carpet.
I give Quaker Steak ‘N Lube: Best Wings USA a score of 7 out of 100,000.
One Comment
Thanks for writing this.
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