Dennis RomeroYou know how to eat an artichoke. We know how to eat an artichoke. Apparently Miami-area Dr. Arturo Carvajal did not know how to eat an artichoke.
And for that reason, he's suing Beverly Hills-based Hillstone Restaurant Group, which owns the North Miami Beach Houston's, where Carvajal devoured a grilled artichoke, skin and all (you know, instead of scraping off the soft flesh with his teeth like the rest of us).
The result of his ravenous consumption, his lawyer says, is that Carvajal ended up in a hospital and suffered “disability, disfigurement, mental anguish.” The trauma.
Houston's restaurant.; Credit: Hillstone
According to our sister publication, the Miami New Times, the 2009 restaurant outing left the good doctor suffering …
” … severe abdominal pain and discomfort”. He went to the hospital, where an “exploratory laparotomy” revealed artichoke leaves lodged within his bowel, he claims.
The doc says that in his native Cuba it's customary to eat everything on the plate, and that the waiter at Houston's did not explain the finer points of artichoke appreciation.
A spokesman for the restaurant chain calls Carbajal's claim a “silly notion.”
We have a call in to Hillstone as well.
In the meantime, we're cooking up a lawsuit in which we accidentally eat a waiter's hand (customary in our own cannibalistic culture) because he didn't explain we just deal with what's on the plate he brought us.
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