Is it better to get food poisoning at a women-owned restaurant?

Because I refused to pollute the sacred temple that is my body with a 947th slice of pizza in one month, while the kids and Senior Management had a strip mall pizza on the way to the Tampa Zoo, I went next door to a “bowl” restaurant. Here’s my Google Maps review:

The good news is that I now know why Chipotle meals always come out too hot to eat. On 12/22 around 5 pm I ordered a Mediterranean Meze bowl. The chicken was not too hot to eat. By 1:30 am I was camped out in the bathroom. The vomiting began at 2:30 am and I was afraid that I was going to die. By 9:00 am, having been up all night in and out of the bathroom, I was afraid that I wasn’t going to die. It has been 48 hours and I’m still dizzy and lightheaded. I’m guessing Clostridium perfringens is the culprit, based on the Mayo Clinic web site: “Commonly spread when serving dishes don’t keep food hot enough or food is chilled too slowly.”

After submitting this, I noticed the following:

How should learning “identifies as women-owned” change how I feel about the worst food poisoning that I can remember despite having traveled to some moderately out-of-the-way places?

In the same strip mall:

When else in a person’s life would it have been healthier to eat at “Fried Rice King”?

(The food poisoning kept me in the hotel room for about 12 hours, then at home for a day, and I was 90 percent better by Day 3. Fortunately, we had so many stops on the Tampa trip that we’d decided to drive rather than fly the Cirrus. Therefore I was able to travel back to Florida’s east coast as inert cargo in the minivan while at least one kid demanded a bathroom or food break every 45 minutes.)

8 thoughts on “Is it better to get food poisoning at a women-owned restaurant?

  1. Sorry to hear — recall when you got food poisoning at a pretty swanky hotel in Northern Virginia (at a conference) — shrimp & grits as I recall, and this was not a “Southern” restaurant which pushed out a lot of seafood gumbo. Meantime, I stuck to the muffins & fresh fruit platters provided during the “breaks” and ordered Earl Grey tea only at that luncheon (and you were picking up the tab) which caused your illness. I have noticed that preparing food at home rarely causes problems — probably cuz the home cook generally is more scrupulous about FIFO in terms of using ingredients. Your brother-in-law got sick at an official luncheon catered by his employer — ambient temperature meats were probably the culprit there, too, as food had been transported from the suburbs into the city. But I am not aware of his getting sick from any home-cooked food in the 30+ years we’ve been married.

  2. The reviews indicate the business has other problems too:
    “Have tried to like this business, but after a year, simply cannot.

    Although the food is typically dry, we’ve overlooked that as the business was new and we firmly support those that are small and locally owned, more so during the COVID crisis. Also, the atmosphere is attractive and unique.

    However, ceaselessly, the counter staff is abominable- they not only fail to deliver orders correctly, but are extremely rude and unprofessional. In the year of regularly visiting this business, there has not been a time when the orders were made accurately and issue free, if either. This culminated last week when our online order included a child’s dinner bowl but we were charged, without explanation, for an adult bowl. When I asked the woman at the counter why the charge was higher she deflected my question, saying it was an adult order, and demanded payment. Many may assume the woman was stealing, as the payment was in cash.

    I asked a man nearby if he was the manger and he said he was, offered me a refund of the difference, etc. However, the experience is our last with this business. Will not return.”

    (As an aside, I am impressed how the reviewer frequented the business for a year consistently getting bad service. Talk about scientific approach!)

  3. Many restaurants store cooked chicken next to raw chicken in the freezer, so the microwaved lukewarm chicken can look well done but still contain salmonella etc.

    I would not avoid restaurants that happen to be owned by a biological woman, but I’d avoid places that are advertised as xyz-owned.

  4. The lion kingdom’s last food poisoning was a salad bar in 1995, but it only took 12 hours to empty a skinny 20 year old lion. 6’4″ Greenspun vomiting sounds like a national emergency.

  5. I’ve never had food poisoning. I did once, however, get a miserable case of hives a couple of hours after eating cooked shrimp served on an American Airlines flight from Boston to Ft. Lauderdale in 1992. A trip to the ER and an antihistamine injection quickly remedied the problem. I’ve been leery about eating shellfish ever since, and have missed out on several all-you-can-eat Maine lobster fests.

    • British royal family eats no shellfish due to inherently higher risk. The royals aren’t the brightest, though.

  6. Watch Kitchen Nightmares or Bar Rescue and you will become very selective on where you dine. Better to visit a market and buy some apples and popcorn to eat in the car. Best to cook and eat at home, bring your own or simply fast.

  7. Late-night stop-ins at those highway rest stop and convience store hot-dog stations, with the dogs rotating on the stainless steel rollers behind some plexiglass, where they have been for the past 82 days, are to be strictly avoided, women-owned or not. My father for some reason has never learned that lesson and recently got so sick I thought we were going to have to put him down.

    I also once had a glass bottle of Heinz Ketchup literally explode in my hands at a table in a Rustler Steak House restaurant back in the 1970s or maybe early 1980s. Glass and ketchup went everywhere but miraculously nobody was lacerated or had their eyes put out. We think it was botulin toxin. We got a new meal for free and a coupon for a free next meal, some hot towels to wipe everything off, and a new bottle of ketchup. We didn’t care if the restaurant was women-owned.

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