I Don't Think You Can Get Mad At These 35 Chinese Restaurants For Putting Opium In Their Customers' Meals
AP- Thirty-five restaurants across China, including a popular Beijing hot pot chain, have been found illegally using opium poppies as seasoning, one of the more unusual practices bedeviling the country’s food regulators. Five restaurants are being prosecuted while 30 others, ranging from Shanghai dumpling joints to noodle shops in southwestern Chongqing, are under investigation, said the China Food and Drug Administration. Cases of cooks sprinkling ground poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates like morphine and codeine, in soup and seafood are not new in China, though it is unclear whether they can effectively hook a customer or deliver a noticeable buzz.
Shaanxi provincial police busted a noodle seller in 2014 after being tipped off by a failed drug test. Seven restaurants were closed in Ningxia province in 2012 for using the additive and Guizhou province shut down 215 restaurants in 2004. Poppy powder, made from capsules and shells that contain higher opiate content than the seeds commonly seen on bagels, can be easily purchased in markets in western China for about $60 a kilogram, according to a 2014 report by the official Xinhua news agency. The additives were commonly mixed with chili oil and powders, making detection difficult without laboratory equipment.
If you have a problem with these restaurants doing this, you are an asshole. Nothing beats getting fucked up while eating. One of the saddest days of my life was when Silk Road closed on the Upper West Side. Good Chinese food with all you can drink boxed wine still doesn’t even feel like real life. Even if you went there to get takeout, they would give you a bottomless glass of (shitty) wine.
Now I’m by no means a wine guy. I’ve just never really acquired a taste for it and my brain feels like it was hit by a hammer the next day. But there was no better deal in the city for people fresh out of college looking to eat while pre-gaming. Chinese waiters swooping in to refill your carafe the minute it was slightly below half-filled. Same goes for BYOB restaurants. Just slugging drinks because it feels like you have to while not paying ridiculous city prices. All nights that start at a BYOB restaurant always end well.
So if you are going to tell me that I don’t have to pay for opium or debate with myself whether or not I should do it, I’ll go to your restaurant 100 times out of 100. Just sneak it into my food like BALCO allegedly snuck the cream and the clear into Barry Bonds. That’s how you get a perfect Yelp score. Just zooting people up to Neptune and back.