ONE BAD EXPERIENCE

I’m typing up this blog post while I lay half dead in bed from a very bad food poisoning experience I had yesterday. The worst part is that it happened in one of my favorite restaurants, ever. It’s a very popular vegan/vegetarian restaurant in Venice, and I’m sure I’ll be back to dine after a few months of forgiveness. I’m just so sad that this one bad experience has left me wondering about my diet and my consumption of food in restaurants.

I’ve been a pescatarian for 9 years and going. I love my occasional raw seafood, and most of my protein comes from eggs and beans. I had dined out at a well-known, quality seafood restaurant in Santa Monica the evening before, and then ordered a breakfast burrito for lunch the next day at said vegetarian restaurant. I knew something was off with the eggs the moment I bit into the second half of my breakfast burrito. However, the sickness and nausea came only 2 hours after my consumption.

I decided to place a courtesy phone call to the manager at the vegetarian restaurant to let them know that I was feeling sick and had been throwing up the past few hours, and perhaps they should check the quality of their eggs. He informed me that food born illnesses don’t usually occur til 12-24 hours after consumption. This would mean that I may have gotten sick at the seafood restaurant. Raw seafood…more suspicious than cooked eggs, right? But I had shared items with my friends that were dining with me at the seafood restaurant and none of them had gotten sick. Just me.

Regardless of where I had gotten my food poisoning, the point is that I did, and I was completely out for the count yesterday. My friends were from out of town and I had to cancel my plans with them the rest of the day because I couldn’t even stand up. I had dined at two very popular and well-known restaurants and this unfortunate event still occurred. Has this ever happened to any of you? And if so, have you gone back to that same restaurant? I’d like to hear about your experiences.