Hi, I'm Rob.

Tale #3: The Macaroni and Cheese Incident 

The Purple Fox was almost never busy, which was nice. I usually worked in the evenings with my friend Ben and Chef James. The most popular thing we had were these daily specials where you picked, like, a meat and then two sides. And the vast majority of our business was carry-out. So most of what we did was take orders over the phone and then have the food ready for when someone came to pick it up. Jack played the trumpet in the Atlanta Symphony. He would usually call us right after rehearsal and order dinner for him and his wife, and we'd have it ready by the time he got there.

So the incident I'm going to talk about took place on a Thursday night. The special was grilled fish. I believe we were using tilapia at the time. And it came with lime coleslaw, and coconut rice. Jack called, ordered two specials, along with a slice of key lime pie.

About a week earlier, Jack had gotten upset with us. He had ordered some soup, picked it up, and on his drive home it had spilled in his car. And he called and let us know we needed to do a better job packaging and securing soup when it was ordered for pick-up. Chef James knew all about that, and when Jack's order came in for the two fish dinners, he told Ben and I that Jack's meal was gonna be on the house tonight, and that he was cooking it himself to make sure it was perfect. That meant Ben and I really had nothing to do except slice the pie, which we did very quickly. James went in the back and cooked Jack's food. It took him about 20 minutes. He returned from the kitchen with two bags. He put the bags on the counter and told us he was headed home. This was not abnormal at all. Ben and I usually closed down the restaurant and we were capable of cooking anything on the menu.

So James left. Jack arrived a little while later. I walked his food out to his car so he didn't have to come in. I told him it was on the house. He was very pleased and I put it in the backseat of his car for him. Ben and I did not expect to have any more customers for the night, so we heated up some corn chowder for our own dinner. We were about to dig in when the phone rang. It was Jack. He said, "Rob, my order is wrong." I said, "Okay, I'm sorry about that. We can make it again and maybe one of us could drive it to you." And he said, "No, this is very confusing. I'm driving back up there right now."

He brought the bags of food back in, plopped them onto the counter, and opened up one of the to-go boxes. It was full of macaroni and cheese. And when I say full, I mean imagine a styrofoam to-go container and imagine piling so much macaroni and cheese into it that it wouldn't close. And there were four of these containers. It had to be close to 10 pounds of mac 'n cheese. He had also wrapped each container in an incredible amount of plastic wrap. Like, 10 layers. So you had to have a knife or scissors to open one of the containers.

Before Jack had returned, I had checked the kitchen to see if maybe his order was back there and Chef James had accidentally given him something else. Not only was his order not back there, there were no dirty pans or dishes in the sink or on the drying rack. No evidence that anything had been cooked. It was perplexing.

So, Jack had called, had ordered two fish dinners and some key lime pie. I put the order in the computer, which led to a ticket being printed in the kitchen. I also called the order out to Chef James. He went into the kitchen and filled four to-go containers to the brim with macaroni and cheese, and then wrapped each of them with way too much plastic wrap. And then, he left us there and we gave it to Jack.

So the first thing we did was cook the food that Jack had actually ordered and sent him on his way. Then, we tried to call Chef James and figure out what had happened, but he didn't answer. More than anything, Ben and I were really curious. We estimated it was almost a whole pan of macaroni and cheese. Which, if you had ordered from us for catering, would cost $70. It was a lot of food. We really wanted to know what had happened, but that would have to wait. James never answered his phone, which was also very strange because if there had been some kind of emergency, he's the only point of contact we had. We just had to leave it until we talked to him again. We finished up our work. We closed down the restaurant when the time came and called it a day.

Neither of us worked the next day, which was Friday, but we both worked Saturday night. And the first thing I did was ask Chef James what the heck had happened. Instead of responding, Chef James just shut down the entire conversation. He said he didn't wanna talk about it. He refused to talk about it. He never talked about it ever again. But Ben and I talked about it all the time. The only thing that we could come up with was that he had done it on purpose as some sort of revenge for Jack complaining about the spilled soup. But it would be a strange revenge. It hurt the business more than it hurt Jack. Jack still got his food.

The only time anyone ever gave us any kind of an explanation was we had this employee Christmas party and James brought his family. And by this time, Ben and I were sort of obsessed with the macaroni and cheese incident. So, we took the opportunity to ask James' wife about it. And she said that he was either drunk or had probably taken some kind of medication. She didn't like James very much, we came to learn, but that's what she thought had happened. He had taken something, had been in some kind of impaired state of mind, and that's why he made all that macaroni and cheese.

For many years after that, we debated which was more likely. He was under the influence of something, or he did it as revenge. We assumed we would never know. The Purple Fox Café closed down. Ben and I moved on, but we stayed friends. We both lost touch with Chef James. We did occasionally still talk about the incident, but we never imagined we would get any more information about what had happened.

And then one day, I was on a hike with a few people. I knew two of them. One of them I didn't know, and her name was Sherri. And on the hike back down, Sherri told a story. A friend of her mother had ordered dinner to-go from this restaurant that was in a grocery store. She had called in an order and then picked it up, and when she got home she discovered that instead of the dinner she had ordered, she had several to-go containers full of potato salad. And I was like, "Wow, that's weird. What a coincidence." But then she added that each of the to-go containers had been wrapped in a crazy amount of plastic wrap. And I said, "Sherri, please tell me you know the name of that restaurant." She didn't, but she promised she would find out. And about a week later, she sent it to me. Ben was not living in the same state, so he couldn't go with me, but we were both excited at the possibility that Chef James had struck again.

One Saturday afternoon, a few weeks later, I went to check it out. It was about an hour's drive. The restaurant was literally in the grocery store, in the seafood aisle. It was small and only sat about 10 people, all on bar stools. You ordered your food, they went and got the fish from the seafood counter, and cooked it right in front of you. I took a position about 50 yards away, in a display of Valentine's Day candy. I pretended to be a confused boyfriend or husband reading the ingredients on each box of candy, but really I was watching the restaurant. I had been there for almost 10 minutes and began to feel that I must look suspicious.

Finally, I saw him. Chef James. He must have been on break, or maybe he was starting a shift. He walked behind the counter. He threw a piece of fish on the grill. I watched. It occurred to me he had no idea that someone had driven over an hour, snuck into a grocery store, and was now watching him cook someone's dinner. This is the moment I should have walked to the restaurant and gotten to the bottom of what had happened with the macaroni and cheese and the potato salad. Unfortunately, I'm a coward. So I just sat there and kept watching like a creep. And then I bought a box of Valentine's Day candy to erase any suspicion, and left.

All I can say with certainty is that sometimes when a customer at a restaurant that Chef James works at orders food for carry-out, he gives them to-go containers filled with pounds and pounds of a single item they did not order. I don't know why he does this. It's become one of the great mysteries of my life.

Rob Tells Tales is produced by me, Rob Tiffin. I had some additional editing help from Ben. The cover art is by Marcella. She also came up with the title. The end credits music is by Podington Bear. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and at robtellstales.com. This podcast would have not been possible without Ben, Marcella, and Melanie. Thank you. And thanks for listening.