Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 11:40 PM PST
I was hospitalized two weekends ago, and one of my favorite restaurants is to blame.
On Saturday evening, my abdomen started aching, a feeling that slowly grew into an intense general pain. At the same time, I couldn't keep any liquids down. I could barely move, had a fever, and I was starting to feel dehydrated. As things got worse, I took a cab to the hospital. I was admitted and treated for most of the night with several bags of IV drip, narcotic painkillers, anti-nausea medication, etc. I felt much, much better once I left, though it took me a few days to get back to solid foods & a regular diet.
The suspected cause, of course, was food poisoning. And since I had eaten out earlier that day in Fremont for lunch, the restaurant there seemed like the likely target.
But when I returned to work, I learned that 5 of my co-workers also had come down with bad cases of food poisoning over the weekend - and all of us had eaten on Friday (in my case, Friday's lunch) or Saturday at a lunch spot our team often frequents, a Japanese sushi restaurant called Kikuya in Redmond. Those who hadn't eaten there weren't sick - ruling out anything else common like our local cafeteria, our admin's candy bowl, etc.
I loved Kikuya. Their udon soup is amazing. Almost as bad as the food poisoning experience was realizing that I can't ever eat there again.
I called them up the next week and told them our story. They didn't either express any sympathy or reject my claim; they simply said they hadn't heard of anyone else getting sick, then they took my number & promised to call me back. (Never happened.)
Another one of my sickened coworkers will be calling the Department of Health shortly to report them.
Why, Kikuya, why? We used to be so close.