Part 1: The Good News 

Anyone living in New York City for over 40 years, as I have, will have experienced many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And here, in these pages, I endeavor to bring you not only the slings and arrows, but those which are truly outrageous.

For many New Yorkers, as well as visitors, one of the greatest things about the city are its restaurants. I have met many who eat all of our meals out. This would seem to be a tremendous luxury, but it need not be. The range of prices in the thousands of eating establishments here provides ample opportunity to find meals at virtually any price imaginable.

Over the thousands of times I have eaten in NYC restaurants, it would be expected to have had unpleasant experiences, but nothing tops a story told to me by a close friend, Leslie, and her visit to a popular restaurant with her husband, Michael. In her tale, not only was the initial offense outrageous, but the response of the management was as well.

Finding things in one’s food, such as hair, is never pleasant, and in a restaurant, there is the added element that it is someone ELSE’S stuff in your food, only made worse if one’s imagination runs wild as to its source. So how would you like to find DENTAL FLOSS in a glass of drinking water? I will let Leslie tell the story in her own words:

When we asked to see the manager, he came over and sat down quite casually at our table like we were friends (had never met him before), leaning back in the chair like he owned the place, and asked what was the problem. Michael asked him to look at the glass of water he had received from the busboy. The manager looked at it, saw the dental floss, stuck his hand in the water, pulled out the floss and threw it on the floor…lightly saying, “Well, we don’t have to look at that anymore.” If I remember correctly, he did not remove the glass. I suppose he apologized, and then left without offering anything. He seemed quite unconcerned about the seriousness of the entire situation. Between that and another time a few months later, I believe, when Michael’s knee stuck to the wall because of someone’s left over blob of jam, he refused to ever go back!

For years, I have relished the opportunity to use Leslie’s story to amplify my own, if and when something like this might happen to me. I did not exactly wish such an occurrence, however, I now see misfortune as an opportunity to tell a story and make lemonade from a sour experience. And fate befell me on Friday, April 20th.

I was eating in a local haunt that I have frequented for decades. I have wearied of much of the food there and, like many places, I have narrowed my choices to just a few items. There, I typically order their Mexican entrees, specifically the enchiladas. However, I was to learn that an enchilada is the perfect vehicle for delivering an unwanted gift – what better food item then a corn tortilla rolled around a filling to entomb a surprise? And surprise it was when I bit into something large and hard. As I spit it out, nothing prepared me for the sight of a METAL BOTTLE CAP. It was no comfort that someone had selected a finer bottle of water, San Pellegrino.

But what I have recounted so far is the Good News. I was soon to learn that this would not be my last unpleasant encounter with Caps and Floss…

See Part 2 here.