What is a restaurant’s responsibility when serving a customer? What about someone with a severe food allergy?
Last week, 34-year-old Simon-Pierre Canuel from Quebec, Canada, went to a local restaurant in Sherbrooke called Le Tapageur for a meal with his partner. What started out as a nice night out, ended up as a horror story, with himself in a coma.
What happened was this: when Canuel ordered the beef tartare, just to cover his bases, he warned his waiter that he suffered from a severe allergy to seafood. Knowing how life-threatening his allergy really was, Canuel asked the waiter to take note of it, and requested that the kitchen staff be informed.
But his requests fell on deaf ears.
In a story that is the nightmare of all who suffer from severe, life-threatening allergies, Canuel waited for his meal and was then accidentally served the salmon tartare, also an item available to diners at the restaurant.
Fatefully, he took a bite. It was only then that he realized what was in his mouth.
According to reports, Canuel’s mouth swelled up within minutes of ingesting his salmon, his throat became itchy and tightened, and his tongue swelled up, causing him to have trouble breathing.
Luckily, Canuel’s partner happened to be a medical resident. The partner joined forces with a doctor in the restaurant to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Canuel while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Canuel was then taken to hospital, where he fell into a coma for two long days, after which, he miraculously woke up.
The result? The victimized diner is now looking to press charges against his 22-year-old waiter. The employee, Canuel said, ignored his requests and according to a report on nationalpost.com, “seemed more interested in socializing with a group at another table, laughing and drinking shooters, than tending to him and his partner.”
Canuel says he now has a fear of going to sleep at night, and suffers from psychological trauma that prevents him from eating outside of his home. He doesn’t wish for his waiter to go to prison, he says, but he does want to get the message across to restaurant owners that serious food allergies are real, and should be respected.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, I thought he ordered a salmon tartare.’” Canuel has been quoted as saying. “But what if I had died? My family would have to live with that.”
Photo credit: Midori Photography/Shutterstock
