As you recall from my last post, the family and I recently headed north to Harrison, Michigan for Memorial Weekend. These trips are always entertaining for a number of reasons, but one of my favorites is that I get a chance to sample some of the finer cuisine that “up north” has to offer.

The great thing about these places is that they are never chain restaurants. One won’t find an Applebees or TGI Fridays in Harrison. No, the only chain you’re likely to find is the one keeping the front door closed after the health department shuts it down.

But more on that later.

So on Memorial Day we visited the local greasy spoon and I must tell you it was quite a treat. Now if you’re unfamiliar with the colloquialism “greasy spoon,” please note that it means a small mom-and-pop restaurant with cheap food and questionable ingredients

1. Are more than 75 percent of the people eating in the dining room wearing some sort of sleeveless shirt? (Please note that in lieu of a sleeveless shirt, you can also count any NASCAR, WWE shirt, or a shirt with some sort of giant wolf on the front of it.)

2. When you sit down, does the waitress lay a place mat down in front of you that is littered with local advertisements? These place mats are great for marketing local businesses, but more importantly mean that the waitresses don’t actually have to wipe down the tables when you’re done eating.

3. Can you get anything on the menu at any time of the day? If someone is eating fried clams at 6 a.m. or corned beef hash at 3:30 p.m. there’s a strong likelihood you’re in a greasy spoon.

4. When you walk in wearing clean clothes and have a mouth full of teeth, do you feel like everyone there is staring at you creepily like you’re one of those “People of Wal-Mart?” Only these people in the restaurant are the “People of Wal-Mart” so they see you more like the “People of Kohl’s” and make fun of you behind your back for matching your belt to your shoes and not having a mullet.

5. Is the restaurant within stumbling distance to a motel that brags on its sign that it offers “Telephone and Cable TV.”

Seriously, there are places like this. These days, a motel/hotel bragging that it offers cable would be like it bragging that they had toilets.

But hell, maybe there are places like that in Harrison, too.

So anyhoo, if you can answer yes to four of those five questions, you’ve found yourself in a greasy spoon.

And on Monday I was lucky enough to answer yes to all five of those babies.

A couple more highlights:

• The menu design was quite substandard and clearly homemade. I’d say they made it in Microsoft Word, but it actually looked more like Microsoft Works. Or maybe Paint. Or Minesweeper.
• All over the menu it bragged about how big the food was. “Biggest omelets in town!” it said. There was, however, no mention of quality.
• There was a little kid waiting tables. I shit you not. She couldn’t have been more than eight or ten and was even wearing one of those fanny satchel things where you can keep straws, napkins, mace, and your tips. There’s a strong chance that it was the owner’s granddaughter. There’s also a strong chance she was working to support her five-year-old daughter.
• When my omelet showed up, she set it in front of me and I immediately knew I was looking at an 80/70/40/10 omelet. What’s that, you say? Well that’s an omelet that has an 80% chance of being the best omelet you’ve ever had in your life, a 70% chance of being a total gut bomb, a 40% chance of giving you some sort of lower bowel parasite, and a 10 percent chance of being all three.
• My mother-in-law sent her orange juice back and told the waitress it tasted like it had gone bad. She kind of nodded as if to say, “Yeah, it probably was” and then promptly brought her a new orange juice which also tasted like it had gone bad.
• I work at a university and we have incredibly strict health and sanitation policies in place. The county health inspector comes out twice a year to inspect the location. Yet at these greasy spoons, I don’t even know if the exterminator comes out twice a year. The guy in the back making my food was wearing a tank top. A tank top! Do they make hair nets for armpits?

So yeah, needless to say we definitely found our way to one of Harrison’s top greasy spoons and I felt the urge to share it with you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, another urge is calling.

And I think the number it’s calling from is 80/70/40/10.

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