Thomas McTompkins

The town that I come from, like a lot of small, isolated communities, has a bustling little…ballet parlour, as the locals like to call it, where men from around the area go for a little nighttime (or afternoon....sometimes morning) entertainment. Granted, it's nothing fancy or pretentious, not the kind of highfalutin' gentlemen's clubs that you see here in the big city of Timmins-but it's a place where the girls are honest and true as the day is long, even if some of them are missing a few teeth and the like.

At risk of sounding nostalgic, I can remember whiling away many a night arm-wrestling the dancers for the last pickled egg in the jar - and losing more often than I won - back in my hometown before I moved to Timmins. I'd like to see how the girl's from Chanel's Cabaret here in the big city would fare at the arm-wrestling table. But I digress.

It was with great dismay that I encountered the much-advertised "buffet" special at the aforementioned Chanel's last Thursday while on my lunch break. Signage outside the club, throughout the club, and even prominently advertised in the local newspaper ballyhooed this fantastic lunchtime feast to go with the…dance recitals, so hey, why not try it out, right? Fine dining, and the most beautiful women in Northern Ontario - what better way to spend lunch on a Thursday? Why wouldn't I jump at this opportunity?

I was so excited to try out this glamourous-sounding buffet, I didn't even eat breakfast on Thursday morning. I was expecting a terrific dining experience.

Boy, was I off. What we were 'treated' to was dry, flavourless hip of beef, warmed-over, overcooked roast potatoes that tasted as though they had been sitting under the heat lamp for weeks, an appalling selection of limp, soggy vegetables and watered-down gravy that looked like it was an ingredient away from being vinyl. And that was the extent of it: four items. Some feast.

This is what passes for a strip club buffet in the city of Timmins?

I thought that maybe I caught them on a bad day, so I tried again on Friday afternoon. I tell you, it was even worse! No, on Friday, a high-traffic lunch hour if there ever was one, us patrons were treated to a couple of trays of cold macaroni and a loaf of Wonderbread. There wasn't even a tray of butter put out. Incredible.

But yet the patrons still just keep flocking in every afternoon like sheep. Where's the outrage? I can't for the life of me believe people keep coming back for this! Sure, the naked women are a draw, I suppose, but the food is deplorable!

If I didn't keep forgetting to bring a lunch to work, I wouldn't keep coming back myself.

I mean, what is my $1.99 going towards? Who do they have cooking this stuff? Is it that hard to find decent kitchen help these days?

I was so mad, I was this close to complaining. If it wasn't for the not-so-charitable treatment that I received when I brought to management's attention that my view of the main stage was clearly obstructed a couple of weeks ago, I would voice my anger in person. I'm still tempted to write a formal letter to the editor of the Daily Press.

Say what you want about my quaint little peeler bar back home, at least they knew how to put out a decent spread. Now there's a strip club buffet. Makes me long for the good old days.

Maybe I should try and get a transfer back home.