from rscottjones

16 years ago today, my buddy Wayne and I began a new quest: to eat lunch at each of the Sketchiest Chinese Restaurants in Downtown Phoenix.

The original idea was to eat at every windowless Chinese restaurant, which seemed like an easy way to determine general sketchiness. But alas, our first target was a place that was only a window. In fact, the regulars we spoke to simply refer to the place as “The Window.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

Huh, it’s never a good sign when the Office of the Medical Examiner shows up at your lunch spot and starts talking to the staff.

Exactly what you’d expect for take-out numbers. (Also note the menu item tucked into the corner: “P5 Pork with vegetable.”

We developed our own hybrid rating system, which combined food quality with general sketchiness of the location¹. After eliminating some candidate restaurants as not sketchy enough, or slightly outside the geographic scope (the I-10/I-17 box, though the sketchiest restaurants were all in the warehouse district south of downtown), and missing out on one or two that closed down before we could eat there, we ended up visiting six total sketchy Chinese restaurants.

It took us until August to complete the quest, mostly due to scheduling issues—specifically, we both needed to have zero plans for that evening or the following day, just in case we got food poisoning. Luckily, we never did get sick, though we definitely gave up on at least one meal after just a bite or two.

All in all, it was a fun quest. I got to visit a few parts of the city that I had never been to before (cough for good reason cough), and that was interesting. As was locating possible restaurants, whether by asking our friends (“wait, you’re doing what?!”), zooming around on Google Street View, or even taking the long way home to scout out a possible objective.

But mostly, it was fun just because it was such a goofy goal to pursue. I’m a big fan of using structured quests, like visiting all the (insert topic), and this was a great demonstration that it almost doesn’t mater what that (insert topic) is. You can have fun pursuing any quest; the fun is simply in pursuing novel experiences. In fact, I still use this example all the time when explaining questing to someone.

And since I know I’ll get this question: “The Window” earned a 2D on our rating scale.