The restaurant we went to is called New York Style Pizza. I think I might have mentioned it before. I like the pizza there because it tastes like...well...pizza. The way I expect it to. Like it tastes back home. I also liked it because it wasn't terribly expensive. Certainly not cheap but and ok price considering I would usually go there and end up with enough leftovers for a cold pizza breakfast and dinner to boot. But I don't think I'll be going back there again.
Last night was far from a pleasant dining experience. First of all the windows were open and the place was swarming with misquitoes. While we were waiting a COCKROACH crawled up along the edge of the table right in front of me and scared the ever living daylights out of me. We switched to a table at the other side of the restaurant (although considering what happened next we should have chosen a table at a different resaturant entirely).
Finally our pizza came out. I made my way through my first slice of delicious pesto pizza without incident. I was halfway through my second slice, enjoying a big bite when I felt something hard and sharp in my mouth. I spit it out immediately and in my hand there was something that looked an awful lot like glass.
Let's back up a bit. When I was in middle school, my music teacher told my class a story about a slave woman who wanted to kill her master. So when she was cooking she decided to grind up a drinking glass that one of the children had broken by accident and put it in the batter for the cornbread. At dinner the master ate a ton of that cornbread, saying it was the best she ever made. In the days to come the master was bed ridden, with an agonozing pain in his gut, slowly dying and no one could figure out why. He eventually died, his stomach torn up, bleeding from the inside.So here I am staring at this shard in my hand (and two other smaller pieces that were in the same bite) and this story is the only thing in my head. After I got back to my apartment I did a bunch of reading online on the subject. If what I read is right, ground up glass won't hurt you, and anything big enough to do any damage you'd notice as soon as it was in your mouth, like I did with that piece of whatever-it-was in my pizza.
The waitress gave us 20% off and a coupon for next time (which I gave to Karen, be she brave enough to return). Sometimes the middle class American in me aches to be back in the US. First of all, I could accurately express how I felt at the moment had I been in the US. I could have asked to see the manager. The meal probably would have been free. The whole event probably wouldn't have happened at all.
It isn't even the cockroach that gets me. I saw one in the office about a month ago and I really didn't care. I don't want them around when I'm eating and I especially don't think they should be around when I am paying as much as I was for my meal. If I go to a tiny bring-your-own-chopstick style noodle shop, I wouldn't really be surprised if I saw a cockroach.
But there was something in my food. I think it's either plastic or Plexiglas. That piece was actually bigger than you see in the picture was bigger when it was in my food (I cut off a bit to try and analyze what it was). If the people working there were careless enough to let something like that get on the pizza, how do I know that next time it won't actually be glass?
Next time I want pizza I am going to go to Papa John's, Pizza Hut or making my own in my toaster oven. I know people make mistakes but I don't think I could go back there and enjoy that restaurant after sitting there feeling terrified that I was going to die an agonizing death of internal bleeding.**
The baseball metaphor doesn't really work here, but I like it anyway...two strikes and you're out, NYSP.
24 hours later and not dead,
Stephanie
**Yes I am dramatic. I realize that.
No comments:
Post a Comment