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There is a little franchise you’ve likely seen but may not remember, for it blends in so well with the dozens of other fast food asian cuisine outlets throughout the country. I am no foreigner to these establishments, for I have been known to seek out a Panda Express from time to time (if only because San Francisco’s Union Square has a pathetic selection of accessible eateries).

Happenstance brought me to Chicago’s O’Hare airport the other day, which tends to delay planes because of a little thing called snow. In my travel misery, which occurs far too frequently lately, I decided to grab a bite to eat at Manchu Wok. Aside from the overall sub-par taste and texture (I understand texture is big with Asian cuisine aficionados), the meal was pretty average and what one would come to expect from airport fare. Then again, the Sesame Chicken tasted a bit too much like ketchup to me, and less like sesame.

Perhaps it was the ketchup flavor that should have alerted me that something was wrong, but alas, I devoured my meal as any hungry man would, only to come down with a stomach ache shortly after finishing my meal. This alone I could have dealt with, but the ache turned to pain, and it wasn’t long after that my stomach decided it needed to jettison some cargo.

My original trip to the bathroom was greeted by a very angry janitorial employee, who showed no sympathy for a man with vomit emerging from his mouth. Rather, as the man proceeded to throw up in a wash basin on the outskirts of the quarantined-because-it’s-after-hours restroom, the janitorial employee, an elderly woman cursing like some TV-show caricature, continued to curse the man out for being courteous enough to throw up inside a garbage bag, rather than on the floor of the quarantined-because-it’s-after-hours restroom.

One would think that landing at Reagan National, puking while being ridiculed by elderly women,  would be bad enough, but Manchu Wok’s secret vomit-inducing recipe did not stop its magic just yet. While stomach pain was temporarily eased, it continued throughout the night, resulting in dreamless sleep constantly urging the pained man to open his eyes. By the time morning came, a morning shower was paired with more jettisoning of cargo, and this would later be paired with a normal trip to the toilet, but of the wet variety. And by “wet variety”, we refer here to Number Two.

Two days after eating at Manchu Wok, my appetite (bodily functions) is mostly usual, though I shall never again eat at such a horrible Panda Express wannabe. May their horrible food selections, and overblown prices, force another man to lie in pain.

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