Noodles are like potato chips, you can never have just one. I mean, who eats a single strand of spaghetti? No one, that’s who. The same goes for Chinese noodles at any given restaurant, although this one fine establishment in particular decided to game the system and make their noodles extra-addictive…if not exactly legal.
The owner of a noodle restaurant in China’s northern Shaanxi province has confessed to lacing his dishes with opium to keep customers coming back for more, according to multiple reports.
Buying drugs and cooking them into your food to the point where the taste isn’t off seems like a lot of work. Wouldn’t just making your food not taste like shit be an easier alternative? But I digress.
The unusual secret ingredient came to light when customer Liu Juyou tested positive for opium following a routine traffic stop earlier this month, the BBC reported. Liu insisted that he had never taken drugs in his life, and suspected a noodle shop he frequented may have been to blame…
To prove his innocence, Liu convinced his family members to eat the same noodles, then test themselves for drugs. When the family members tested positive for the same drug, police opened an investigation into the restaurant, and discovered other customers were also unknowingly consuming opium.
Oh okay, so instead of grabbing a take-out box of noodles from the restaurant and having the police test it for drugs, just get your family members testing positive for opiates instead. Because that’s the responsible and reasonable thing to do, right? Or you could’ve blackmailed the restaurant with the knowledge of what they were doing for a cut of their profits. Never go with the first idea you have, always wait until better and better ones pop up.
The restaurant’s owner, who goes by the name “Zhang,” admitted to police that he purchased 4.4 pounds of poppy buds for $100 in August, and had been grinding them into a powder that he added to the noodles, the Xi’an Evening News reported, according to a Google translation…
Putting poppy in noodles, sauces and other dishes was once a popular practice in China, but has since been banned, The Week reported.
I’m not expert, but I bet they could’ve made more money just hocking drugs out of the back of the kitchen rather than throwing it away in the food.
[H/T Mashable, image via Shutterstock]