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A Miami man is suing a restaurant for failing to warn him not to eat the tough, pointy leaves of an artichoke.
Arturo Carvjal, a doctor with a family practice in Hollywood, wound up in hospital with severe abdominal pain and discomfort after eating the entire vegetable, the Miami New Times reports.
A copy of the court document, linked to the newspaper's web site, shows Dr. Carvajal is seeking more than $15,000 in damages from Houston's Restaurant, its parent Hillstone Restaurant Group, and the restaurant's general manager for "bodily injury, resulting pain and suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life," and health care-related expenses.
The document says the restaurant servers did not ask Dr. Carvajal whether he was familiar with how to eat the "Grilled Artichokes" special he ordered, nor did they explain that the outer leaves should not be eaten. Later in hospital, an exploratory laparotomy procedure discovered he had artichoke leaves in his small bowel.
"It takes a sophisticated diner to be familiar with the artichoke," Dr. Carvajal's lawyer, Marc Ginsberg told the Miami New Times. "People might think that as a doctor, he'd know how to eat one. But he was thinking it was like a food he might have eaten in his native Cuba, where you eat everything on the plate."
Wency Leung