I’m a journalist who happens to do work in a fairly hectic city that’s swarming with rude and insolent people. They get on my ass all day long. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to tell you the name of this city, nor can I reveal the name of the press company I work for. If I told you certain details, it would be easy for people to find my real name, which is why I’ve had to use a pen name for certain articles. I tend to be asked to research rather unusually strange reports around the city that I’m asked to research for my articles. I’ve seen reports of bizarre, ritualistic killings, undiscovered species of bugs infesting homes, and sudden appearances of doppelgängers to name a few. There are so many occurrences around the city that I’ve included in articles. I’m constantly told to tone down my writing to make the story seem rosier in contrast to the dark reality.
The story I’m about to recall for you was the story that my boss forced me to take down after a few sensitive details came out, coincidentally along with my article. The research process for this story nearly broke me—I mean, with unfaltering sincerity. I’m going to tell you the full story.
It started with a restaurant that popped up on 4th Avenue, not more than five blocks away from my shithole apartment. Even though I usually take the highway to get to work, I have passed by that street hundreds of times and never seen a single hard-hat worker or traffic cone in sight, yet there it was. The building just appeared in an empty lot one day without warning, but the weird part is that no one seemed to question its sudden existence. The fact was just accepted overnight.
On a particularly uneventful day, I went in to work, like usual, to finish the final touches on my editorial piece, which was grueling to finish and even harder to get approved for publishing. After a few long hours of my face glued to my computer screens, my boss, Matthew, tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you mind coming here for a sec, Mia?” He asked me, gesturing to the door of his office. “Sure.” I muttered as a thousand different negative outcomes of this situation played out in my head. I sat on the uncomfortable chair in front of his desk as he shut the door behind me.
“Mia, I hope you don’t have much on your plate right now, because I’d like you to pursue this story I discovered recently.” I let out a quiet sigh of relief as the possibility of something worse left my thoughts. Matt was still standing up and seemed to be anxious to get off whatever was on his mind. “What’s the story?” I wondered. “Have you heard of a restaurant called The Spice Cafe?” I scanned my brain for an answer, then shook my head. “Yeah, me neither.” Matt expressed himself, his arms leaning on his chair.
“People who work overnight jobs around the area said they heard some loud noises outside at night and then woke up to see a formally vacant building transformed into some sort of restaurant.” Matt continued. I perked up. “Are you sure it’s 4th Avenue? I live not too far from there, and I’ve never heard of—“ Matt interjected.
“Precisely!” He stated. “Here’s the part that I don’t understand.” He put his hand on his chin. “It’s not even a chain restaurant; it’s an independently owned business, but it brings in more customers than McDonald’s, for god’s sake.” I mulled over my response. “Well, I can’t say I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure what makes it a noteworthy story.” I pointed it out. “I had a feeling you’d say that, so I managed to find the TV commercial the owners of the restaurant put out a couple weeks ago.”
Matt turned his computer around and pulled up a video file. “It’s a bit, well. Obscure.” He said it with an unsure tone.
The ad started playing on the computer screen. It started with a brief shot of the small restaurant, equipped with Spanish roofing and a red-tiled overhang with a circular sign above the tall, glass doors that read, “The Spice Cafe.” The video quality reminded me of ads in the early 1990s and looked like it was shot with a camcorder. The shot then faded into a shot of three people sitting on a round table, inside, laughing and chatting.” The man at the head of the table then stood up as the camera followed him.
“Here at the Spice Cafe, we take the satisfaction of our customers seriously and promise that every dish made by our fine chefs will provide a euphoric delight with our exotic flavors and spices.”
The man looked almost cartoonish and was visibly skinny, bearing a pencil-thin mustache above his lip. The shot flashed to the kitchen, showing the cooks working vigorously, all with big smiles that dug into their cheeks. It made me feel uneasy. The man continued with an odd lilt in his voice as he revealed the many customers eating and sitting on tables. The shot transitioned to a white background. The camera is panning over the many dishes they serve.
“Try our stir-fried seafood pasta, or buy a pack of one of our many baked goods, all made from scratch.” The man’s voice narrated. “If you’re not sure where to start, let me offer to sample our locally famous pork and beef curry that our customers can’t get enough of.”
The rest of the commercial consisted of the strange man asking customers for their opinion on the food. Unsurprisingly, all of them raved about their menu and the taste of the dishes, especially their curry. It ended with a shot of all the employees in front of the store, all holding a white banner with the words ‘grand opening.’ In big, red letters.
After Matt stopped the commercial, I realized a few things. Most people in the ad had the same unnatural smiles, even the customers who were interviewed at the end. You could see the smile on their cheeks, but their eyes didn’t squint with it. It was like they were being forced to smile against their will. Secondly, all the customers sitting on the tables inside seemed to be just stuffing their faces with food and weren’t paying any attention to their surroundings at all.
I relayed my realizations to Matt, and he nodded his head. “It honestly gets stranger the more times you watch it.” Matt remarked. He explained that it was a bit of a risk to pursue the story, but he had a hunch that there was gold here. Additionally, there have been few reports about the food that didn’t make sense and went further than just food poisoning. Looking it up, you could see that the Spice Cafe had a mere two-star rating. Many of the reviews stated that they didn’t like any of the dishes on the menu, but they would still come back for some of their signature dishes. These were the few things that were of interest to my boss, and they were the things I was told to base my field research on. A simple piece about a new restaurant—that’s all it was ever planned to be.
Because Matt suggested I cast a wide net to root out the details, I took the only other journalist in my department who wasn’t a complete plagiarism scumbag to conduct my research with.
Emily was the only person I trusted at the company I worked for, and subsequently, she became one of my only friends outside of work at the time as well. We both had a few sneaky tactics up our sleeves but settled on the only decent first step that came to mind, by simply making a visit to this weird restaurant on 4th Street.
When we arrived at the location after our shift that day, the building was the first thing that caught our eye. It was pristine, even cozy-looking. The same as it looked in the commercial, with a large archway leading to the door and a line of antsy people that extended to the side walk. “You’d think a 2-star cafe wouldn’t bring these kinds of numbers.” Emily whispered to me. Since we both avoided getting lunch before this, I was particularly vexed to have to wait such a long time just to get to the main entrance. By the time we got to the front door, you could see an employee who I couldn’t decide was an usher or just someone who greeted people as they walked in. The employees inside didn’t look like they were just smiling; they sounded cheerful, almost enjoying themselves in a way that I’ve never seen average employees working in food service to be. We sat at our table and took in our surroundings. There was a red-bricked design on the right and left walls, rustic zig-zag wood paneling in the back, and hand-written signs listing the specials in chalk. “A hipster’s dream.” I chucked. “I mean, seriously, string lights?” Emily finished my sentence. I’m pretty sure it was somewhat of a bookstore as well. You could tell they were pushing for a vintage, rustic feel quite a bit. A girl with a black button-down shirt and a brown apron tied around her waist came over to our table.
“Good evening, welcome to the Spice Cafe!” The girl sang in a lilting voice. “You both must be new; have we decided on something yet?” Finding it hard to ignore the girl’s unusual comment, I gave Emily a distracted look, hoping she’d have a response ready. “What would you usually recommend to customers?” Emily responded.
“I’d say our Jambalaya pasta is great if you like spicy; our shrimp salad is one of our more popular ones, but the fan favorite has to be our curry.” The girl perked up. “Curry?” I questioned. “Of course! Our customers absolutely adore our curry dish, and personally, I’d say I eat it on my lunch breaks all the time.”
The young waitress had long, wavy brown hair in a braid that bounced as she spoke. I looked through the menu a bit more in depth when Emily decided to chime in. “Great! I’ll have the curry then, and if you could surprise me with a small soup, that would be great.” Emily pointed to the menu. “a pot of coffee, also.” She said it politely.
Being a fairly devout vegetarian (mainly for dietary reasons), I had to go with tomato soup and an Asian-style tofu salad. I could tell the girl was going on and on about their beef and pork curry and pasta dishes in a way that felt almost persistent. I couldn’t help but notice that the waitress had a noticeably skinny appearance that made her look like she was only 16. After the girl who took our orders walked away, I was dying to release what I’d been holding in.
“Sorry, Em, I was thrown off by the whole ‘you seem new’ thing.” I apologized. “I was too; it was something different for sure.” She said it in a low voice as the girl walked off. “But the smiling made me a little uncomfortable.” Emily mentioned. “I swear to God, she was still smiling when she was walking away.” I let out an awkward chuckle when I heard her say this.
“She looks really young.” I pointed it out. “And stick-thin at that.” Emily added. My eyes kept getting pulled away towards the bar towards the back of the restaurant. It included your common espresso machine, far too many brands of wine stacked on wooden shelves, and obnoxious people on bar seats, hee-ing and hawing about the football game playing on the only TV they had stuck to the ceiling.
But I was especially drawn to the tall, aluminum door to the left of the register that I assumed led to the kitchen. It appeared to be your average, run-of-the-mill, swinging kitchen door you’d see in most restaurants at first glance, but something was different about this one. If you looked closer, you could see that not only were you unable to see through the little viewing window at the top, made with frosted glass, but the door had two locks on the side and a small, electronic keypad under them.
“Was this door password protected?” I thought to myself. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen that door swing open once while we were there. I thought it was weird, but I didn’t mention it to Emily. Our food was delivered almost a half hour after we ordered, by a cook who I didn’t see come from the actual kitchen. “I hope you enjoy! It’s always nice to hear reviews from first-timers.” The man blurted it out.
Emily and I stared down at our food, which, admittedly, looked more delicious than the taste itself. I’m not much of a food critic, but let me say the food here was nothing to rave about. Everything tasted pretty bland for a place calling itself the Spice Cafe. Even the pastries I ordered for desert were stale and dense, making them more fit to be added as another brick to their walls.
“Holy hell, this curry is massive.” Emily stated.
The plate they gave her was deep and bigger than my head. The curry had a thick, velvety-red sauce with white rice circling the dish and perfectly coated cuts of beef and pork. Each piece of meat is topped with parsley. We sat there, staring at it for a moment. Hell, it even looked good to me. I almost forgot for a moment that I was a vegetarian. Even the scent the steam gave off was enough to make you go mad.
“Do you seriously think that girl eats this on her lunches?” I smirked.
Emily lifted up a spoonful of the curry to taste. I tried my best to finish my plates of food, but ended up having to admit defeat after I realized that I couldn’t even bear chewing most of the food. I noticed Emily had cleared her entire plate of curry in under ten minutes.
“You actually liked it?” I muttered. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t stop eating it!” Emily was breathing heavily, like she had just run a marathon. “Were the other things as good? Everything I ordered tasted like it had been frozen.” Emily shook her head. “Beside the curry, nothing else compares,” she added. “I can’t explain it, because it tastes like any other curry, but there’s just something amazing about it.”
Emily was gesturing wildly with her hands. As we kept talking, I could see just past her head. In the distance, I spotted our waitress from before, conversing with a tall man at the greeter’s stand. He was wearing a muted red suit and tie and kept writing something down on his notepad. The girl kept glancing our way as if we were the subject of their conversation somehow. They did all this with the same manic expressions on their faces and sickly smiles to match. Out of nowhere, something the waitress said caused the man’s expression to change; the man nodded, folded his notepad, and then walked away. When our waitress came back, it was not five minutes later.
“I see you’re a fan of our curry.” The girl tilted her head toward Emily. Emily and I decided to ask her a few questions about how she liked working at the Spice Cafe. “Well, I think it’s so nice to love coming to work every day with encouraging management. We love our regulars!” I nodded at the girl, looking at her name tag, which read, Morgan.
“Would you say it’s a good first job to have?” Emily asked. “I assume so; it’s been so long since I started working,” the girl said. “Morgan.” I hesitated. “If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?” I folded my hands. “I’ll be 25 this summer.”
The next morning, our boss pulled Emily and me into his office to discuss our notes from our visit the previous day. I told him about the odd waitress and explained that the atmosphere was definitively off. “The curry was to die for, but everything else was garbage, to be frank.” Emily noted. “Ugh, I’ve never liked curry. But that seems to be where the money is at that place.” Matthew sighed. He asked if we saw anything out of the ordinary while we were there. “I did see that the door to their kitchen had two locks and a passcode on it. No one went in or out.” I stated. “A passcode? Are you sure?” Matthew said, baffled at the thought. “Why the hell do you need a passcode to a kitchen door in a cafe?” Matt looked puzzled. “My thoughts exactly.” I mumbled. “Okay, I’m going to need you both to find some way to get interviews with people and customers. I need customers’ opinions.” My boss requested it firmly. “Also, if you can, get some details on the way they run things. Matt told us under his breath. “Tastefully.”
Emily and I regrouped during our break and went over different ideas we had for getting more detailed information that wasn’t distasteful or illegal. I suggested that we could interview some more employees, but realized that most workers would probably lie or butter the truth up in order to keep their jobs.
“What if we contacted the people who wrote the bad reviews on the Spice Cafe’s page and just interviewed those people?” Emily suggested. “I think you’re right; we need some unbiased opinions if we’re going to get anywhere.”
For the next couple of days, I searched the web high and low for information about the Spice Cafe and who their distributors were, keeping in mind to also look for people willing to provide a statement on their negative review of the cafe. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to dig up dirt on this place but could not find a thing except for their own website. I couldn’t even find the name of the cafe’s owner, and when I called them on the phone and asked who the owner was, the only response I got was, “We have many managers.” In the most ear-grating, cheery tone, no matter what I said. I couldn’t find a damn thing on this place; it was an independent business that hadn’t existed prior to its opening on 4th Street. I was unsure if I was going to find anything to use for my article.
Emily walked over to my cubicle and slipped me a piece of paper with a name and a phone number on it. “Her name’s Beth; she’s one of the people who left a one-star review of the Spice Cafe online.”
She leaned on my desk, standing beside me. “What did you say? Did she respond to you at all?” I begged. “Not yet, sadly. She said she wanted time to think about it.” I exhaled and groaned. “I’m fucking with you. We have an interview on Saturday with her.” Emily grinned and began laughing. “You bitch!” I exclaimed.
“I was about to bash my head on the keyboard. You’re definitely more persuasive than I am.” I said it playfully. I told her I was on the verge of panic, trying to scan the internet for any source that provided even a spec of knowledge on the cafe’s origin.
“I got really frustrated too, so I ended up doing something a tad bit questionable to find out who their supply distributor was.” Emily casually mentioned. I turned my chair to face her. “Where did you find the name of their distribution company?” “You see, that’s the thing. I kind of pretended to be their distributor on the phone, and they had to confirm who was calling.” Emily cracked her knuckles. “I’ve never heard of the place they were talking about.” Emily explained. “They asked if it was Fresh Fare Distribution calling. I haven’t ever heard of the place, have you?” I tried to remember if I’d heard that name before.
“Fresh Fare Distribution?”
When Saturday rolled around, Emily picked up on my sight irritation to have to do an interview on my day off, so she offered to pick me up and drive us both to the woman’s house. As we drove, I smelled something strong in her car, but I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up, so I ended up rolling down the windows instead. Beth was waiting for us at her door when we arrived. Beth was a sweet, middle-aged woman with a deep southern accent and a great sense of hospitality. She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would write a scathing review of a restaurant to be vengeful. I had a hard time imagining how this woman would sound when she was angry.
“It’s nice to meet you two. I apologize; you can probably tell I haven’t done an interview in a while.” The woman giggled to herself and sipped her tea. “Nothing to be nervous about; we’ve just been doing a little research on this place and wanted to have a discussion with you about your review.” Emily relayed. “Would you mind giving us an official statement?” I asked. Beth agreed, nodding her head.
“Oh, that place was trouble in more ways than one.” Beth stated. “My husband and I went there for our anniversary recently, and to start, it was one of the worst dinners I’ve had.” She described. “The only thing I came back for was the curry because of how flavorful it was, but nothing was worth how sick it made me feel.” She went on. Emily and I both looked up from our notebooks. “Like throwing up, sick?” I interjected, now feeling intrigued. “Not after the first time; it was probably the third or fourth time that I ended up in the hospital after eating there. I was vomiting everywhere and started to feel confused. I got a 104-degree fever.”
“Oh my—so you had stomach flu, I’m guessing?” I presumed. “They weren’t able to figure out what was wrong; they just ended up treating my symptoms.” She recounted. “But that’s not what made me write the review. You see, my daughter used to work there and…”
“Your daughter worked there?” I interrupted. “She did for a short time, and the way they treated her was pretty abhorrent, but the questionable things she saw while working there.” Beth cut herself off. “It would probably be better coming from her. I can give you her number if you want.” Beth offered.
“She doesn’t live with me and my husband anymore, but she has an apartment not too far from here.” Emily leaned in. “Thank you so much; that would be a massive help.” Beth wrote down her daughter’s number on a piece of paper and passed it over to Emily.
Once we were back in the car, Emily and I went over Beth’s statements back and forth. “I feel so bad for that woman. I thought she was going to be a crackpot.” Emily mumbled. “Yeah, I do too.” I looked out the window. “What do you think happened to her daughter?” She shrugged. “No reason we call her now, right?” I confirmed. “Probably.” Emily acknowledged. I pulled out my phone and dialed in the number that Beth wrote down. “Hello, this is Abigail; who is this?” The woman’s voice on the other line rang out. I told her I was an associate of the press company I still can’t name and gave her the rundown on our research for the article and that we’d heard that she was a former employee of the Spice Cafe.
“Do you know a Beth Saunders?” I inquired. “She’s my mother, yes.”” We just recently met with and got a statement from her about a recent visit to the cafe with her and her husband for their anniversary two weeks ago and—“ “What?” Abigail sounded slightly confused. “Look, you must’ve misunderstood what she was saying. My father died of a heart attack three years ago, after I moved out.” My stomach began to churn. “She hated the food at the cafe at first, but kept going back for some reason.”
“All I know is after mom went to the hospital, she changed drastically. Mentally and physically.” Abigail described.
“These delusions of reality, thinking that my dad was still alive.”
When I turned over to Emily, I hadn’t realized that while I had been on the phone, she had pulled out a small, white, styrofoam container from the back seat. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize the smell before. To my disbelief, it was the curry from the Spice Cafe. She was almost finished.