Over 160 sickened after eating at Olive Garden (Indianapolis)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16223079 /

The Marion County Health Department says more than 160 people have claimed they became ill after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant in Indianapolis last weekend.

A health department spokesman says they're trying to isolate the cause and have found no health code violations at the restaurant on the city's north side. Health officials are collecting leftover food and stool samples from those who were stricken in an effort to pinpoint the source of the illness.

A spokesman for Olive Garden was not immediately available for comment.

[Beetwasher]

1. Please Put This In The Lounge

[ulysses]

2. ROFL

Beat me to it.

[Beetwasher]

13. I'm Such An Insider

[maddezmom]

3. I would but the lounge mods

would probably drown me in the hot-tub.

[Vidar]

Now if Tom Cruise was also spotted there...

[Vidar]

64. Now if Tom Cruise was also spotted there...

[RubyDuby in GA]

4. They probably tried to coat something with corn flakes.

[maddezmom]

7. ....

only kidding

[RubyDuby in GA]

10. I know...I know...

I kid....I kid....

[AlCzervik]

17. while breastfeeding.

[RamboLiberal]

5. I'm staying out of the Lounge OG War

Sorry, but I'm staying out of the Olive Garden DU Lounge War. In this one I'm Switzerland.

[maddezmom]

6. ....

and it was red wine all over my new white t-shirt. (for the record it's 5pm here)

[aquart]

18. The what?

[Ian David]

8. Olive Garden (Darden Restaurants): 91% Republican-- EVIL REPUKE COMPANY!

$21,048 to Democrats 9%
$218,786 to Republicans 91%
$0 to Others
$239,833 in Total Contributions

Darden Restaurants Also owns:

* Bahama Breeze
* Olive Garden
* Red Lobster
* Smokey Bones Barbeque & Grill

More:
http://www.buyblue.org/node/757/view/information


"When you're here, you're getting diarrhea."

[slackmaster]

9. Olive Garden is HELL!

We've been saying it for over a year now.

[stellanoir]

11. I don't really understand how the ads at the top of any given page

are organized but on my screen at the top of this page are two ads for Olive Garden restaurants.

Anyone else see them. It's pretty darned ironic.

Oh and WARNING: I just alerted Matcom to this thread.

[Dr.Phool]

14. I see them on my screen too.

Good advertisement!

[denverbill]

12. Probably no contamination. It was just the taste of the food. n/t

[Crabby Appleton]

15. only 160? that's quite an improvement. nt

[Virginia Dare]

16. Look out for major changes in food inspection...

among the growers, manufacturers and packagers. The restaurant lobby will be all over this. When it starts to effect the corporate bottom line, you can bet something will be done.

If this is about more issues with lettuce, the shit will hit the fan!! (pun intended).

[havocmom]

19. Newest form of warfare: Bidding wars for GOP Congressmen

The corporate group with the most congressmen in their back pocket wins.

Big Ag v Big Chain Food

Big Pharma v Big Insurance

Big Oil v the whole friggin world

[rainbow4321]

20. Nothing is scarier than visiting a city's health dept. restaurant inspection webpage

Our city has local restaurants' inspection grades on their website..grades them A thru F. 2 of the most popular steakhouses in town got "C"s---Texas Land and Cattle and the other was Saltgrass Steakhouse. Local Cinemark movie theater (has a mini restaurant in the lobby) got a "D". One of the CiCi's stores got an "F".

Pretty damn eye opening!

[RadiDem]

21. Did they eat any Pop Tarts?

[RamboLiberal]

22. Up to 300 sick now

More than 300 people say they became ill, and at least three have been hospitalized, after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant last weekend, health officials said Friday.

The restaurant has been closed while health officials and the company investigate what caused customers to complain of nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea, a company spokesman said.

Steve Coe, a spokesman for the Orlando, Fla.-based chain of Italian restaurants, said health officials are focusing on an employee who had flu-like symptoms similar to those patrons complained of.

Six restaurant workers reported Monday that they felt ill, said Marion County Health Department spokesman John Althardt.

"We're trying to isolate what the cause of the illness might be," he said.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061215/D8M1J5V80.html

[Ken Burch]

23. "We're trying to isolate what the cause of the illness might be," he said.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it might be the food.

[krispos42]

24. Looks like the pre-election "terra" attacks arrived late

Now DHS won't issue any orange alerts or scary press releases 'cuz it's after the election and they don't want to strengthen the Dems any more than they have to. No warnings about transsexual Muslim Nazi Eskimos sneaking in from Canada (let's build another wall!!!) and trying to wipe us out.

I'm waiting for the Mad Cow epidemic that was sprayed on the Midwestern herds from Saddam's long-range WMD-spraying drone program.

[deminks]

25. Over 250 sick after eating at Indiana Olive Garden

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061215/ts_nm/olivegarden_i...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - More than 250 people have reported becoming sick after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant in Indianapolis, Indiana, a county health official said on Friday, a day after an outbreak of E.coli at Taco Bell restaurants was declared over.

The news makes Olive Garden at least the third U.S. restaurant chain this month to be linked to widespread customer illnesses.

Some customers who ate at the Olive Garden restaurant in northeast Indianapolis between December 9 and December 13 have reported nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and in some cases fever, said John Althardt, a spokesman for the Marion County Health Department.

Three of those people have been hospitalized.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

26. Now that's Hospital-iano.

I wouldn't eat there if people paid me. It's total crap. Literally, apparently.

[Ecumenist]

38. I totally agree, Haruka!

Their food revolts me. I HATE THAT PLACE. The food just seems to be way TOO salty and "canned" tasting.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

39. I'm from Jersey. There's TONS of REAL Italian food around for the same price.

I can't believe there's an Olive Garden in my town. I want to know what kind of idiots eat there.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

41. The same "idiots" in Northern Virginia who wait 1.5 hours...

for a table at Don Pablo's, when there are TONS of authentic (cheap but good) Mexican, Salvadorean, Peruvian (mmm, Peruvian chicken...), etc. restaurants in the area. The best ceviche I ever had (outside of the Caribbean) was at some dive in Bailey's Crossroads - for under $10.

[prole_for_peace]

46. but this kind of people don't like authentic food

they want american-ized Mexican, Italian, Chinese...

[enid602]

42. no comparison

If you want good Italian, go to Rome or Buenos Aires; the shit here is just Italian-American. No comparison.

[alcibiades_mystery]

57. Not in NYC

You get real Italian at plenty of places. Much of it is Italian-American, but not all.

And every single one of all these places is better than the awful Olive Garden. Food for imbeciles.

[Ecumenist]

47. I'm in northern California

There are absolutely unbelievably scrumptious and GENUINE Italian restaurants in North Beach in San Francisco!!

[musette_sf]

55. US Restaurant on Columbus

mmmmmmmmmmm

and I'm from Brooklyn, so there's a pretty high bar there for me when it comes to italian food. nice homestyle straight-ahead food.

it was way better under the old owners in the funky old location, but it's still very good.

[diamidue]

63. Thanks for the heads up!

I'm going to check it out next time I'm in The City. I looked it up and there is a menu posted on-line. Sounds wonderful.

[SoCalDem]

48. The only problem with that is that they probably buy their produce

the same way.

We have more or less put the local green-grocers out of business, and instead have "factory-farms" with sweatshop labor, and mass produce it in a few places. Then we load it up on big trucks and burn mass quantities of $3 a gallon fuel to deliver the same stuff all over the country..

[Sequoia]

50. I like your Christmas pic.

Then I realized it was you!! I usually see the thread before I notice the poster. When I lived in Los Angeles the supermarkets had the factory farm food...dry celery, flimsy cucumbers, tasteless carrots, and dried out tomatoes. The Farmers Market in Santa Monica was the place to go. Now that I live in N. Cal, the food is much better but the winter weather ain't no picnic.

[SoCalDem]

51. Batten down the hatches.. My son just called me from the Seattle area

before his cell phone dies..

he's got no power, there's a 200ft tall tree at a 45 degree angle leaning towards his house, and the power lines are being held up by the WIRES..

He works nights, and at 1:25 Am they lost power at work, and sent everyone home for TWO days..(or longer) ..houses come first in power restoration..

he made it home before the wind really blew, but they are expecting more..

He was on his way to radio Shack to get a car charger for his phone..

Norther CA is supposed to get some of that storm

Hold tight

[Sequoia]

53. Glad he's okay.

Got the logs ready to throw in the fire. Got lots of books to read too.
Thanks. I shouldn't complain, WA and OR are having one hell of a bad time.

[rainbow4321]

56. I remember seeing a Domino delivery car while in NJ

I had flown back home there for my HS reunion and first thing I did was hit all the mom/pop Italian places in town. As I drove around I saw a Domino pizza delivery car and thought "WTF??"..who would order from there with all the REAL pizza joints in town!! After a weekend of eating real pizza/Italian food it was really hard to come back to Texas-land-of-cardboard-pizza!

[maxsolomon]

27. and my wife worries when i eat the Sweet Shrimp

but i know the chef & i trust him. i'd eat Fugu if he said it was safe.

eat organic, eat local.

[kwyjibo]

28. I've gotten horribly sick from Olive Garden before... never going there again!

the only restaurant that has made me feel worse is Arby's. ew.

[BushOut06]

29. Good DUers don't eat at Olive Garden

I'm sure this is an Al Qaeda plot, no doubt.

[bahrbearian]

35. After 9-11 a friend of mine Exclaimed that" they are going to poision

the food suppply!" ,I asked if he meant 'they' being the FDA?

[Kutjara]

30. Er, how did the Health Department distinguish...

...these cases of "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever" from the normal reaction people have to eating at Olive Garden? There must be some new test.

[madrchsod]

31. terrorist attacks? where`s homeland security?

bad food and unsanitary conditions thanks to crappy management,crappy employees,and crappy field food inspection. welcome to fast food hell.....

[Akoto]

32. My brother used to work at Olive Garden.

He was a busboy. He'd often note, to his amusement, that he never saw a single Italian in the kitchen.

Apparently much of the food was just prepackaged, frozen stuff as well. Ah well, I prefer Panera Bread or local restauraunts.

[sabbat hunter]

34. most chain restaurants

use a lot of prepackaged, frozen food, not just olive garden.

[musette_sf]

59. straight off the Sysco truck

i've had the opportunity to read some of the restaurant industry trade magazines. you would curtail your eating-out considerably if you saw some of the pre-packaged cheap-ass crap sold to so-called "restauranteurs" looking to cut every corner possible.

[IDemo]

54. They use grape jelly in their spaghetti sauce,

or so we read several years ago..

[MGD]

33. I woke up at midnight last night with the same symptoms.

I think it's non-bacterial gastroeneritis caused by the infamous norrovirus. http://www.medicinenet.com/norovirus_infection/article....
This whole area has it, had it recently, or will soon have it. It's very contagious even when it isn't accompanied by the aforementioned symptoms and it's also quite miserable. It's primary mode of transmission is the fecal/oral route via contaminated food. people who have had it continue to be contagious for about 2 weeks after the symptoms go away. As few as 10 individual viral particles are sufficient to cause the disese. This sucks.

[NRaleighLiberal]

37. I think people get this type of thing much more often than they

realize - between bacterial infections from poorly handled or spoiled food and Norwalk virus, lots of people who think that they have "the flu" or "sick stomach" or "just a little virus" or "indegestion" are likely afflicted by food-borne (or food-worker)borne illnesses. They tend to pass fast (no pun intended!), but are certainly no fun at all (driving that porcelain bus - deciding which end to attend to, etc).

[anotherdrew]

36. the corporate assholes now growing all our food can't even be bothered to keep the shit off

we're just supposed to sit here and take whatever crap they choose to sell us.

What the hell is wrong with this nation?

[jus_the_facts]

40. Imported produce strikes again...Thanks to NAFTA/GATT and the impotent FDA....

[Ayesha]

43. I and my partner got sick after eating at the Olive Garden a few months ago

Nausea, diahrrea, felt like total crap. It lasted about 24 hours. It was right when the spinach e coli scare started, so I was pretty freaked out. It was the first time I'd eaten there in years and will definitely be the last!

The only things we both ate in common while there were the salad and the cheese. I'm betting lettuce was the culprit.

[pinniped]

44. That's because the kitchen help didn't get trained at the....

Olive Garden Cookiing Academy in Italy.

[shanti]

45. applebee's

my son got food poisoning from eating buffalo chicken wings there last december. he had to be taken to the emergency room. it seems like it's a crapshoot eating out anymore...

[Ken Burch]

65. a "crapshoot" ?

Accurately if bluntly stated.

[BeyondGeography]

49. Is there a Department of Agriculture in the house?

Those anti-regulation Republicans are making people sick.

[The Anti-Neo Con]

52. This kinda crap has been happening sooooo much lately.

I think I'll eat home-cooked meals from now on.

I don't want to be or

[Manifestor_of_Light]

58. Do any Italian places NOT use tomatoes in everything?

I can't eat there because I'm allergic to tomatoes.
Would somebody tell me where they are? There has to be non-tomato Italian cooking someplace.
I know of a place in Houston, but it's very expensive.

[slackmaster]

60. If you ever come to San Diego

I recommend Jack and Giulio's. See http://www.jackandgiulios.com /

They have many tomato-free selections.



All of their food is made from fresh ingredients. The family has been running a restaurant in San Diego since 1959 or so.

[mcscajun]

62. You want Northern Italian cuisine -- far, far lesser reliance on tomatoes

...more wine and cream.

http://www.10best.com/Houston/Restaurants/Italian/index...

[BeHereNow]

61. Ah, the "Corporatization" of America and the world...

By removing the human element of the local eatery,
just look what at what fresh hell we face.

I'm sure this is just the beginning.

BHN