Reminds me of the Little Britain skit when Ting Tong opened a Thai restaurant in Mr Dudley's apartment (couldn't find it on YouTube, so I'll link to TikTok, mea culpa):
Nah, thereâs a Chinese place about 5 minutes from my house that is either some rich guyâs shitty project, or more likely, a money laundering front.
Place is never ordered from, only ever has the same 3 cars in the lot, and has been open for about 15 years. It survived COVID when half the restaurants in my city had to close up shop.
I went in once about 10 years ago, and the food was just god awful. No flavor and it looked like week old microwaved Chinese. The whole place was filthy and I was amazed it hadnât been shut down.
No way that OP stumbled into a front and actually enjoyed the food, even if they were as high as the space station.
I agree with your conclusion, you usually don't run the front for real to fly under the radar better. Maybe I thought about underground restaurants I've seen a couple of times targeting plentiful chinese tourists? I've been in a couple of these. Ground level, no signs, mute chinese personal, hierogliphs on the menu and just a word of a month from locals that you can fill your stomack for pennies there. Maybe they stumbled upon one such place and can't recall where it was.
Probably didn't have a sign outside so it just looks like a vacant storefront during the day. Noodle place I went to is like that, plus another diner I visited.
This reminds me of that story where a couple came across a small restaurant with a bunch of old, vintage cars parked and when they went in to eat they had the best tasting meal of their lives. Turns out the succulent meat was human.
The restaurantâs there, anon didnât find it because anon didnât actually walk around for several hours+ trying to find it. Everyone knows anons are idiots.