I found a worm in my food at Agave Restaurant on Boulevard Avenue in Atlanta, Ga.
Yep. A worm. It wasn't a big worm … maybe a centimeter … but it was a live worm – crawling and gyrating all over my plate. Which was mostly empty, because I had already eaten my meal.
Horrified, I called for the waitress. She was horrified, too – quickly taking my meal away, saying that the manager would be right over.
To set the scene a bit – Agave is a nice restaurant. My margaritas were $8.50, my rack of lamb was 20-some dollars; our ceviche was, what, 10 bucks? This is the kind of place with dim lighting and tables of girls celebrating birthdays – not some roadside flea-bitten junkyard hot-dog purveyor.
So there I am – horrified, wondering if I ate a worm, in this nice restaurant, when Manager Blowhard arrives. He proceeds to tell me that Agave uses only the freshest ingredients in their food, and that the rosemary is grown out back in the garden, and that the worm probably just didn't get washed off when they rinsed the rosemary. He then told me that I didn't have to pay for my dish.
The facts were fine.
The attitude wasn't.
The dude made it seem like it was some kind of special feature that there was a worm in my food – "We only serve the finest worms, madam. These worms are sourced from the finest all-organic rosemary plants, which I fertilize myself with the composted manure of prize thoroughbred stallions. I assure you that our worms are of the finest quality, and all the rage in Luxembourg."
I was astonished. He wasn't apologetic, he didn't make any sort of gesture to comfort my poor afflicted self … nope; he was just rude. I was lucky he didn't start going into the wonderful, nutritional benefits of a diet of worms – less bowel disease, more wiggle in your walk!
My gallant German friend, Creative Loafing creative director Markus Schneider, couldn't stand it. He blurted out that we were from Creative Loafing (parent company of the Weekly Planet), and that I was a food critic. For the Florida paper, the Planet, I demurred – technically, I'm no critic, but I do write a column…
Manager Blowhard then tried to BULLY us, stating that yes, Agave had just renewed their advertising contract that day. As if that gave him the right to just sprinkle worms in my food, willy-nilly!
Finally, I blurted out something about the two-worm scenario. It's not the worm I see that's the problem; it's the worm I didn't see that worries me. Who is to say that Willy the Worm didn't have Wilhelmina the Worm out with him for a little wormy date on that fateful sprig of rosemary? Who is to say that he didn't watch – horrified, stunned, maybe a little relieved – as she accidentally crept her way onto a piece of lamb headed for my mouth, that I then slowly chewed, savoring the flavor of the fatty lamb, unaware that I was getting more protein than I bargained for? Who is to say that Willy the Worm didn't crawl all over my meal, leaving little worm droppings on my mashed potatoes and corn salsa, a conga line of worm poop?
The bottom line is: He's a worm! You don't make excuses for worms! You make APOLOGIES for worms!
Manager Blowhard then agreed to comp our meal. He left, and we weren't even happy. It wasn't the free meal we were after – just an apology. I mean – we're all reasonable folks. We live by the 10-second rule, and we realized that the worm was just one of those fluke things. It was annoying, we were pissed, I was grossed out and feeling a little green, but it was over. We thought.
Here is where it got dicey.
Manager Blowhard comes back.
He wants to see our business cards.
He doesn't believe us.
He thinks we're lying about working at Creative Loafing.
He might even think I'm lying about the worm – like it was a finger or something.
Of course, none of us have them on us. Manager Blowhard – who is by this time really pissed – makes some lame excuse about wanting to call me the next day to apologize. What, he has to wait a day to do that? Is there some kind of government waiting period for apologies? He's just trying to suss us out. I offer to write my name and number on a piece of paper for him – he declines.
Eventually, we ended up leaving … leaving behind Agave, Manager Blowhard, and little Willy the Worm. RIP, little wormy friend.
Will I return to visit Agave, a decent Southwestern restaurant just around the corner from my new digs? Maybe – if only to bring Manager Blowhard a copy of this article. He's welcome to use it as compost.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2005.