I would never give an establishment this bad rating except under these extraordinary circumstances. This was the first time I had ever been to this restaurant. First, let me say I still would not do this if I were not 100% certain I got sick...from the food there. To be clear, this was not a little upset stomach case but violent illness for 18 hours and total dehydration, the result of being unable even hold down water.
Let me explain. On Friday, June 17th, 2022, my walking group did a nearby hike and decided to have lunch afterwards at this restaurant. There were 9 of us (seniors) in total. We all ordered lunch and two of us ordered shrimp sandwiches. It was a lovely day, nice setting, very nice staff and the food did not taste “off”. Everything was fine until Saturday evening at about midnight when I started to feel quite sick and became violently ill by about 1:00 a.m. I was sick every 20 minutes for the next 5 hours and it continued all day Sunday if I tried to sit up or take a sip of water. By that evening I was on Gravol and electrolytes and feeling slightly better. I was able to check emails at that time and saw a message from the other person who ate a shrimp sandwich on Friday asking me if I was okay as she was really sick overnight and was wondering If it could have been the shrimp, since only the two of us had consumed shrimp. I was stunned as I never would have put this together myself. I’ve never had food poisoning in my life before nor have I ever been so sick. No one else in the group was sick. We checked with the others who had potato salad with their lunch, which we had also eaten, but everyone was fine so it was unequivocally the shrimp and/or mayonnaise. To protect other patrons, this incident was reported by my “co-walker” to the restaurant and a message was left for the manager to contact her. The manager never called back to enquire after our health or otherwise. The incident was also reported to the Vancouver Island Health Unit Inspector on Monday. The inspector did investigate on Tuesday but found nothing conclusive, and as it was already 4 days later now, any contaminated foods were likely gone or destroyed following my co-walker’s call to the restaurant.
I know other patrons were likely sick from this as well, but perhaps just could not put it together if they were the only one in their party who ate the shrimp. I know if we had not both eaten the same thing at the same time and became so sick, at the almost the identical time on Saturday, I would not have figured it out. I had hoped the restaurant would at least acknowledge the suffering we both went through even if they did not want to admit fault. We were not looking for anything from the phone call except that and to warn management of the issue so they could mitigate further patrons becoming so ill.
If you choose to eat at this restaurant, be selective in what you order. I know I will never be able to eat there again. One and done, as they say!More