I had lunch with a co-worker today, which means we got to select between a couple of sit-down restaurants. When you do lunch in Cresco, your choices are kind of limited. Yes, there are a few places to eat, but when you factor in parking convenience, service and cost, you’re left with two places—Subway and the Chinese restaurant next door.
We decided to go to the Chinese place, since there’s a better chance for conversation, and personally Subway is my go-to restaurant when I get tired of bringing lunch in, so a change of pace was nice. It doesn’t hurt that it is probably the best Chinese restaurant in a couple of towns, and I include the Chinese buffets in Decorah. On a related note, there is more than one Chinese buffet in Decorah.
The Chinese place, Panda Garden, is kind of an anomaly in small towns. Most small towns I’ve been in favor the mom-and-pop restaurant, where the term “fancy dining” means they have pasta salad at the salad bar. Ethnic restaurants are not the norm. Panda Garden, though, seems to have done all right for itself.
Of course, being a small town there are a few concessions, such as the fact that the only Asian in the restaurant is the chef. Granted, if you’re Chinese restaurant is only going to have one Chinese person in it, the chef position is probably the way to go but it is somewhat strange to be greeted by a blonde waitress who says “Welcome to Panda Garden,” with a slight southern drawl.
Once you get over that little hurdle, the rest of the meal is great. They have some fantastic lunch specials for under $6, and you get a pretty decent portion of food for the price. I’m surprised the fast-food restaurants haven’t put a horse’s head in the owner’s bed yet.
As an added bonus, our meal was delivered by the chef himself, a man wearing an apron, a bar towel over his shoulder, and coming out of the kitchen with purpose. These entrees were going to be delivered, damn it, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The speakers played some soft, tranquil Chinese music, which I thought was slightly inappropriate. For that kind of walk, he should have had a heavy metal entrance theme, like White Zombie’s Electric Head Part 2. Still, he was polite as he gave us our meals, then strode back into the kitchen. Never have I been more convinced that a chef was going back in to do battle with his ingredients. You may joke about restaurants having to kill the animals to get the meat when the service is taking too long, but I would not be surprised if the chef went back to the kitchen and immediately picked up a weapon that was one part chef’s knife, one part battle ax, and got to work.
Our lunch got me to thinking about another restaurant in town, one where I have never eaten. Not because I’ve heard bad things about it or because it’s out of the way. It’s just that the place is always closed. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure when it’s open. I know that it serves breakfast and lunch, but it closes at some vaguely-defined point after that, like around 1 p.m. or so. To be honest, I have never seen it open. I can’t even say with certainty that the place is ever open. It’s the Loch Ness Monster of restaurants.
What makes this café even weirder is that it has an immense parking lot. In the back lot behind this restaurant, there is a block that is solely for parking. About a third of this is public parking on a lot which was paved sometime back when Iowa was first settled. Then there is the next third, which is this restaurant’s parking lot. The final third is split between the pharmacy where I live, an apartment building next door, a bar and the VFW hall. Every day of the week two thirds of this parking lot are filled, and the parking lot that covers the pharmacy, apartments and bar is at least half-full all the time.
The café’s parking lot has, at maximum, two cars in it at any one time. The questions this raises are endless. The first is, why does the owner guard his parking lot so diligently? There are at least three “No Trespassing” signs on the property, and the owner let me know that if I ever parked there I would be towed off, in no uncertain terms. I can understand him not wanting me to park there if it meant he would lose customers, but I’m pretty sure the customers could find somewhere else to park, like right next to where I parked. At worst it would delay their entrance into the café by about three feet.
It’s not as though parking in Cresco is a rare commodity, either. When I was called out for parking on the owner’s lot, I drove the car forward five feet and parked on the public lot. I’ve already considered that the parking lot may be on top of an underground supper club, but I can’t get any confirmation or denial of this.
I think it may be a matter of principle. Let’s face it, in the Midwest, your home is your castle, and your property boundaries are sacred. It’s not such a stretch to imagine that this parking lot may be empty most of the time, and the restaurant may be closed most of the time, but it’s still the owner’s parking lot, darn it, and a man’s parking lot means something. It means that people are welcome to park there and wait for the restaurant to open, and it means that as long as that parking lot isn’t filled up with people who are going to get their prescriptions refilled or going across the alleyway to the bank or whatever, that restaurant is undeniably there. And I respect this.
Besides, it’s a nice view to have while I’m eating take-out stir fry.
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