Finding a foreign item in food is the pits, as Dennis Kucinich learned

PD file U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich

COMMENTARY

When the news broke about Dennis Kucinich's tooth meeting an olive pit, I must admit I felt his pain.

Left side, lower molar, to be exact.

My surprise was more grand than his, but the outcome similar. And it had nothing to do with my work reviewing restaurants, which has produced more unidentified crunching than I'd like to report.

Here's the scene: My friend Ellie and I are eating lunch at our regular, low-cost, high-flavor ethnic place. A stuffed, fried dish we adore is before us and we are noshing and yakking with glee.

Then I bite down on something so hard, so metallic, that the shock makes me wince. I check my fork for a missing tine. Nothing out of place. I wriggle around with my tongue -- a bit difficult since, as I said, we are stuffing ourselves -- and find something round and hard.

I pull it from between my lips, grateful to be eating with a forgiving friend. Never mind the old manners about pushing the item onto a fork and lowering it to your plate: I wanted this one out, pronto.

I hold it up. It's a ring, a shiny, yellow-gold ring like a modest wedding band.

What the . . . ?

This fairy-tale item looked like it had been through the Cuisinart, and my foodie mind surmised that a cook might have lost a little weight and found his or her ring loose. Still, why wasn't it removed before working? Put it on a neck chain for safekeeping. Or something.

The server reported, after my numerous requests for an answer, that the ring, indeed, belonged to the cook. She gave me a new dish, gratis, but I wasn't hungry anymore.

A few weeks later, my dentist found a hairline crack in the aching molar that bit the ring. I would need a crown.

It didn't seem fair. I already had crowns -- they were expensive and a pain. It would be good to make a point of the incident so it didn't happen again.

But the owner wasn't there to tell when it happened, which means I'd have to push my case harder long after the fact. And I loved the restaurant. I wanted to go back to the ritual of noshing and yakking with Ellie over the same divine dish. I also had dental insurance, something the cook might not have.

I didn't sue -- but I'm glad Kucinich did. Someone should make a point about little things that shouldn't happen in the kitchen. People can get hurt, and his injury was worse than mine.

I hope his settlement includes asking the restaurant for a full accounting of how this olive pit got in his food and how it won't happen again. He should bargain to share that information with other customers, so they can know the place is safe for them, too.

Then he should forget the settlement.

Yes, it might look to some that he backed down after ridicule, but we know Kucinich is tougher (or more stubborn) than that. He might want to give it back so he can be a leader who makes decisions that consider others -- all the time. He should drop it so he can proudly continue to go to a convenient place and eat olive after olive, to his heart's content.

They're good for you. Almost always.

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