Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Weekend Tweats [The Bestest Briefest Words About Food In 140 Characters Or Less]

Posted Jul 15, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Jul 15, 2012 at 09:16 AM

Funniest food thing that happened to me this week?

It’s a tie.

The first: I went into a soul-food restaurant I had never visited before in Tampa Heights.

I go in, and there are handmade signs everywhere.

One advertised mullet gizzards. Another offered free fish and fries with the purchase of a car wash done by a detailer outside the restaurant.

My favorite read:

SPECIAL!

THIS IS NOT A TASTE BEFORE YOU BUY RESTAURANT ... ITS TWO BLOCKS DOWN TO YOUR RIGHT OR LEFT.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

The capper? They finished it with a smiley face.

I loved that. Sincerely. Always good to let customers know where you stand. If you can do it with a smile, even better.

The second funniest thing this week came when I stopped by a 7-Eleven for Free Slurpee Day. (They do this every July 11.)

Amid the mosh pit surrounding the Slurpee font, I was taking photos. Eventually, a manager came up to politely ask why I was taking photos in his store.

This has happened to me before. 7-Eleven has a thing about photography in its store. I last got confronted a few years ago when I busted out a camera while shooting a photo of a Slurpee poured into a cup shaped like Superman’s logo. I kid you not. The woman in the 7-Eleven logo-covered smock suddenly turned into an anti-papparazzo. Like she was a bodyguard and the Slim Jims were Lindsay Lohan. It was hilarious.

On that day, though, the manager relaxed when I told him I wrote about food. Told me a story about how someone came in and got 90 mini-Slurpees for his kids in summer school. He was cool with it, he said. Keeps the customer coming back, he said.

Smart guy.

Then he proceeded to bust out a miniature helicopter and fly it inside the store before crashing into a towering display case filled with bags of Doritos JACKED. He then begged me not to identify him if I wrote about Free Slurpee Day.

For about 45 seconds, I felt like I was in a John Hughes movie.

Anyway, I say all this as a preamble to stating that neither of those events were nearly as entertaining as these food tweets I found this week on Twitter:

Got one you want to share? THIS IS NOT A READ BEFORE YOU BUY COLUMN. Actually, it is. If you know of anything funnier, please kindly deposit it in the comments. THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

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