After a pasta meal served at its cafeteria went viral on social media, Chinese foodies have been officially flocking to an improbable destination: a funeral home.
The Erlong Funeral Home in Guizhou, in the southwest of China, is where the plate was discovered.
Although the restaurant serves the needs of the funeral home’s users, hordes of diners- some posing as mourners- started showing up to try the meals as word spread about the noodles.
Erlong has since announced it will allow some members of the public to eat at its premises, as long as they do not disturb genuine mourners.
The funeral home offers a variety of noodle dishes for breakfast and dinner that start at 10 yuan per bowl ( 1.38 ) and end at 1 oz.
The noodles apparently served with peanuts and pork mince are the most popular.
One Erlong employee claimed that they “only handle concerns for customers who come to the death home.”
The employee continued, adding that occasionally the queues at Erlong are so much that customers may have to wait a few hours to find their foodstuff. However, other individuals have been sneaking in to get a bowl of pasta.
” There have been people pretending to be friends of the dying, it’s hard to tell them off when it gets crowded, and it’s difficult to manage”, he said.
According to Erlong’s restaurant in an interview with local media, the funeral home has since decided to offer 50 pots of pasta to members of the public for free as long as” they do not change people’s mourning.”
The trend for the pasta appeared to have started earlier this month when a social media user shared a picture of the meal while visiting a companion in Guizhou, a city known for its spicy and sour dishes.
” My friend says the food at this funeral home is so good”, they wrote earlier this month on Xiaohongshu, also known as Red Note. The wait for foods is longer than the wait for the deceased’s plants.
” I didn’t find to take the pasta, because my friend’s dad didn’t know anyone who was holding a funeral company”.
Numerous Taiwanese social media users have since shared their experiences with eating the pasta.
On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, one user shared a picture of the dining hall’s reservations, with what appeared to be a group queuing up for food.
” I heard the noodles around were quite good”, they wrote. ” I thought about how little life was, and got another bowl”.