No Soup for Me...

Waiter, there's a condom in my soup

CNN - Tuesday, November 11, 2003


LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Waiter, there is something worse than a fly in my soup.

A California woman who found a condom in her bowl of clam chowder has sued the upscale restaurant that served it to her -- saying she has suffered depression and anxiety from the shocking discovery.

But an attorney for McCormick & Schmicks Seafood Restaurant in Irvine, California, says the eatery has no idea how the condom got into Laila Sultan's food.

Sultan, 48, and her three companions are suing the restaurant for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress in a case that is expected to go to trial early next year.

"I thought it was calamari or shrimp or something so I chewed one more," Sultan told local KCAL-TV Monday. "It felt rubbery. I told my friends, 'My God, there's something in my mouth."'

Sultan said she spit the offending object into a napkin and at first thought it was a latex glove. Then her friend realized what it was.

"I said, 'Oh, my God' and ran into the bathroom with another friend of mine and I started throwing up," she said. "I threw up everything I ate there, every single thing, I threw up in the bathroom."

But Patrick Stark, an attorney for McCormick & Schmicks, told the Los Angeles Times that its staff had no idea how the condom got into the chowder, adding: "It's as big a mystery to us as it is to anybody else."

"We are going to argue at trial there is absolutely no evidence to suggest the restaurant was the source of the condom," he told the paper. "Either it came from (the four women) or it was thrown in as a practical joke by another patron at the restaurant."

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This tops T_J's dining experience at Maggiano's...