Olive Garden Customer Bites Into a Strange Item While Eating Soup — Then, He Sued the Restaurant
Ingredients of "minestrone soup" are like different movie characters, each bringing its unique flavor. The tomato broth, veggies, and noodles whip up a melodious cocktail of tastes. But in the case of Thomas Howie, this soup turned out to be a horror. While relishing minestrone soup at a local Olive Garden, Howie made a discovery so unsettling that he would hesitate in eating at a restaurant ever again in his lifetime. Hovering inside his soup bowl was a skeleton, a rat’s foot, reported TODAY.
It was March 11, 2023, when Howie went out to have dinner with his friends at a local Olive Garden in Warren, Michigan. To begin with, the group ordered minestrone soup and breadsticks. Everything was going well. Howie was slurping the soup while enjoying the moment with his friends. Then came a plot twist. As he guzzled a spoonful of soup into his mouth, a sharp, stabbing pain enveloped his cheek and his teeth rammed into something hard. It wasn’t until he spat out the contents and his friend took a good look at them that they realized that there was a strange bone-like thing in the soup he had vomited.
On August 18, 2023, Howie filed a lawsuit with the Macomb County 16th Judicial Circuit Court over what he alleges is “failure to maintain premises free of vermin and the negligent preparation and service of food.” He reported that “he felt a stabbing pain in his mouth” after gulping down a spoonful from the bowl. Howie tried to swallow, but found it difficult as a hard object was lodged into the right side of his cheek. He spat it out and, without looking at it, he wrapped it around in a napkin. It wasn’t until one of his friends took a closer look that they noticed a bony leg “of a rodent, hairy and clawed” sitting in the spitted gloop.
Seeing the skeleton, Howie threw up. According to the lawsuit, as shared by TODAY, Howie represented his case by lawyer Daniel Gwinn of the Michigan firm Gwinn Legal PLLC. He filed a claim to seek at least $25,000 for both the physical injury and “mental anguish and emotional distress.” He mentioned that as a result of this incident, he has “become paranoid about dining at any restaurant where he cannot closely observe his food being prepared,” which also affected his ability to socialize.
Even when he reached out to the management to inform them about the rodent bone in the soup, they shrugged it off, saying, “That’s funny. We don’t even put meat in minestrone.” On their part, Olive Garden denied the lawsuit, telling TODAY that Howie’s claim wasn’t backed up by validity and evidence. They added that the bone didn’t show any sign of having been cooked or any reddish tint that it should have picked up from the tomatoey soup. They also provided the news channel a copy of a Food Service Establishment Inspection Report, completed by the Macomb County Health Department on March 13, asserting that there was no evidence of any rodents in their restaurant.
The restaurant management said that there were many reasons why his claim could not be considered. Firstly, the restaurant had undergone pest control on the same day that Howie had his soup. Secondly, the bone found in the napkin was too large for the size of a restaurant’s soup spoon, which means it was difficult for someone to get this bone inserted in their mouth. But Gwinn affirmed that the restaurant was at fault and they wouldn’t withdraw the lawsuit.