Yesterday, we reported that Rodney Hawkins, who was allergic to shellfish, died after eating an entree containing crab meat which was mistakenly brought to him at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Lovejoy, GA.. According to AJC, Ruby Tuesday denies any wrongdoing and says that the man actually ordered the chicken and crab meat dish called the “Chicken Oscar” which triggered the fatal allergic reaction. Rodney’s widow, Linda Hawkins, disagrees. Details, inside…
The article says,
[Linda Hawkins] hopes that Ruby Tuesday accepts responsibility and does whatever is necessary to see that this doesn’t happen again,” said Chicago attorney Joseph Leonardi, speaking on behalf of the Hawkins family.
Hawkins, 35, collapsed and went into anaphylactic shock Thursday night soon after consuming the shellfish at the Ruby Tuesday on Tara Boulevard, according to an autopsy conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The welder and aspiring rapper was rushed to Southern Regional Medical Center and pronounced dead a half hour later.
Investigators have suggested a mix-up in the dinner order, but won’t file any criminal charges.
“He had ordered the Chicken Fresco and the Chicken Oscar was brought out by mistake,” said GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) spokesman John Bankhead.
Ruby Tuesday said its own review revealed no such error.
“Our investigation of this incident, which includes interviews with the server and manager on duty and the collection of their written notes of what occurred, clearly indicates that the guest ordered Chicken Oscar, a dish that contains crab meat,” Rick Johnson, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement sent to the AJC on Tuesday.
“The server’s order pad and the ticket to the kitchen also verify the accuracy of the order.”
The two dishes, restaurant officials point out, differ significantly in appearance. Chicken Fresco is topped with a tomato slice and chopped green herbs, while Chicken Oscar has crab meat and asparagus spears.
“She [the server] is very clear that he repeated more than one time that Chicken Oscar was his choice,” said Johnson, whose company has more than 25 metro Atlanta locations. “We don’t believe there was any confusion on her part. Had he been confused . . . when the dish was brought to the table it would be been clearly visible to him that it had crab meat on it.”
Virginia Hawkins said in a phone interview from her Momence, Ill., home that her brother was allergic to shellfish since childhood. She said he moved from Illinois to metro Atlanta to pursue a rap music career.
Are we to believe that this man with an acute shellfish allergy since childhood failed to read the description of the entree or simply ordered the wrong entree by mistake? And that this also slipped by his wife who was with him? Why would Rodney have repeated his order “more than once?” That implies that the order was spoken at least 3 times which seems a bit unusual. Of course, maybe the RT representative meant to say the order was said more than once, not repeated. We’re not saying that Ruby Tuesday’s version is impossible, just improbable. But we don’t like to speculate, we leave that to the commenters.
PREVIOUSLY: Wrong Order Kills Customer At Ruby Tuesday
Wife: Man who died didn’t order crab dish [AJC] (Thanks to Sunny!)
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I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Ruby Tuesday for ridding us of “an aspiring rapper.”
@edicius: And therefore, in a crowded restaurant, the guy might believe the crabmeat smell was coming from a nearby table. Possibly even someone else at the same table was having crabmeat (on purpose) and he chalked it up to that.
I’ve had my order taken incorrectly a number of times. And back when I was in college and waiting tables, yeah, I took the wrong order a couple of times. Restaurants are crowded and noisy, and “Fresco” and “Oscar” have the same distinctive SK sound in the middle, suggesting a high probability of confusion.
I think blaming this guy is ridiculous — and this is coming from someone who thinks the restaurant’s error is simply a tragic mistake, and no cause for litigation.
@snakeskin33:
You are probably right, unless he told her he had a food allergy to shellfish in which case it may not be so clear cut.
@Corporate-Shill:
Good thinking. I generally try to stick to iced-tea (which is always served without sugar in CA) or water as too much Aspartame may not be good.
I’m surprised the idea of the order being repeated seems so foreign to some people.
I can’t think of a restaurant I’ve been to where the don’t say it at least three times, not to mention any additional comments that will usually be snuck in (“oh you’ll love the Chicken Oscar, I just had it last night”). As many have pointed out they’ll almost always say it when they put it down to, because if nothing else, the waiter and the server always seem to have two different ideas of how the guest numbering works so they’ll usually have to ask “who had the ______” when they bring it out.
I think its just going to be one of those things where you aren’t going to get to blame some one in the end, and you’ll never know the exact story. Nothing about RT’s story sounds unbelievable, nothing about the wife’s story sounds unbelievable.
“I’m allergic to [insert food item here] and I am always extremely careful and not at all complacent. Therefore, it is completely implausible that some other guy I’ve never met made a simple mistake. He must be incredibly stupid.”
Come on people! Judging by the pic, I can’t tell that that’s crab meat. I don’t really eat crab though, but then again, neither does this guy. Also, the waitress can make mistakes, but the guy can’t? Yes, issues of life and death you pay more attention to, but nothing is immune to complacency.
“How could this guy not have noticed the tomato! He should have memorized the ingredients and noticed that it was slightly off!”
Who really notices the lack of a tomato anyway? Especially if you’re hungry.
Do I think it was a mistake? Yes.
Do I think RT shouldn’t be going into CYA mode? Yes.
Why does everyone seem so hard on the guy over a mistake, yet are willing to forgive the waitress? His mistake was bigger, but there is no mistake that can not be made.
I am very allergic to peanuts, am very careful about what I order at restaurants and what I put in my mouth, and I carry an epipen everywhere. The odor of peanuts completely turns me off, and even if I get a bite of something in my mouth that has peanuts, I can usually tell immediately and can spit it out before it’s been swallowed.
That being said, a few years ago I landed in emergency after eating a slice of gourmet pizza… barbecue pizza… Thai barbecue pizza to be exact (unbeknown to me). Now not all Thai food has peanuts in it, but for some reason Thai peanut barbecue sauce almost completely masks the odor and taste so doesn’t trigger my defenses and is really delicious. Therefore I completely avoid Thai restaurants. Because I didn’t know the pizza (brought in to work) was ‘Thai’ barbecue, I had eaten the entire slice before I knew it was peanut. Luckily we were close to the hospital as I was having major breathing difficulty by the time we got there.
Having said all that I could imagine the victim may not have noticed the crab. Particularly with the skimpy amounts of seafood you get at some restaurants, and if, say, a nearby table was eating seafood.
Unspoiled crab out of the shell doesn’t have much smell. The time I had this dish at RT, the crab was rendered into little threads. Disappointing, so I’ve never had it again.
Now, unless you were particularly looking forward to a condiment — such as the tomatoes — you might not notice their absence. I remember once eating at an upscale spot. Crab sandwich, actually, but I digress. I felt halfway through the sandwich that something was missing. Duh, it was. Nice fresh avocado, and it was part of the reason I’d ordered that sandwich. So I don’t fault the deceased for not noticing the tomato or absence thereof.
Unfathomable to me, however, why he had no epi-pen. I have 2 friends who carry them and have told me where they keep them, how to use them, etc.
@picardia: @Tiber: Blaming the guy is ridiculous, but not because he’s necessary blameless.
It’s ridiculous because nobody has any idea what actually transpired. We have 3 or 4 sentences, a few statements in a news story. What happened during that fateful meal? Who screwed up? Whose fault was it? Is somebody lying or mistaken? Nobody knows.
It’s just as ridiculous as blaming the restaurant, the server, the weather, the menu, or “fresco” vs. “oscar”.
@TwoScoopsRice: Check the story. It never says there was or was not an EpiPen. It isn’t always enough to save someone.
Sounds like a case of he said, she said. It would be neat if they had a video of the guy pointing to the menu as he talked to the waitress.
@Hobz: Bless you, I thought this bit of sarcasm was also going to waste
You have made my day by noticing.
It doesn’t really matter what Ruby Tuesdays says in response, they are going to be sued for a bazillion dollars. (and they’ll most likely lose) they might as well say “We really like bassett hounds and are committed to the colour blue” for all the good it will do them.
okay. I have friends who are mildly allergic to shellfish and they are very careful about where they go out to eat, and ask the waiter/waitress what is on the plate. They never take the chance.
“Fresco” and “Oscar” sound similar.
Ruby Tuesday’s food does not always look, taste or smell like it should. Crab meat could easily have not looked or smelled like crab meat. You’ve seen pictures of “food as advertised” vs. “food as it really is” here on Consumerist before.
Once when I was a young ‘un, my family and I were eating in a Friendly’s. My father ordered for me, then ordered me a small Coke, despite the fact that I didn’t like Coke. So as the waitress was walking away to put in the order, I started making all sorts of noise that I didn’t want a Coke, I wanted an orange soda. So my father shouts to the waitress that instead of a small Coke, we want an orange soda. The waitress asks back, “Orange?” and we all shout “Orange” in unison.
She brings me a large Coke.
If “large” and “orange” could be confused (by both the waitress and my family), it’s not hard to imagine that the waitress could have been repeating “Oscar?” and the victim “Fresco” and they were suffering a mutual lack of communication.
@CumaeanSibyl: That was a great post. I almost spit out my non shellfish dinner after your last sentence…
@Rachacha: “Imitation Crab” is white fish, which is generally bland, that is soaked in the liquid boiled out of crab meat. So crab is an ingredient of Imitation Crab.
If the diner thought the dish has imitation crab in it (which is likely), he may have eaten it, unaware of that fact. However, Ruby Tuesday’s website clearly states that Chicken Oscar contains Jumbo Lump Crab Meat, which is from the hind section of a blue crab. It has nearly the same texture as imitation crab meat and is pretty much what Imitation Crab is… well… imitating.
It’s also not the result of a recipe change (A move from imitation crab to real crab), because Ruby Tuesday’s website was updated with the addition of Chicken Oscar around Jan 27th of 2007, which featured “Grilled, fresh 10 oz. chicken breast topped with fresh, jumbo lump crabmeat, asparagus tips and a lemon butter sauce.”
[web.archive.org]
Yeah… I’m gonna go ahead and stay away from this discussion.
Unless the man told RT he had a life threatening allergy to seafood/crab, then holding them accountable is wrong. I seriously doubt they had the intention of killing this man.
It’s a mistake that unfortunately had a fatal result. But there are so many variables here it’s just not fair to blame RT.
If you are deathly allergic to a food item, it is YOUR responsability to make that allergy known to the waitstaff. Restaurants frequently cook shellfish, fish, steak, chicken, veggies on one grill (mine does). On a busy night with orders flying in and out of the kitchen, mistakes can and do happen.
My sister is also allergic to shellfish, and when she eats out she ASKS the waitress if the grill used to cook her steak is also used to cook mussels/shrimp/salmon/calamari etc– Especially if she’s at a restaurant like Ruby Tuesdays with underpaid, overworked staff that probably serves over 500 people a night. She also checks her meal when it arrives. And she always carries an epi-pen.
From what I’ve read, the man did none of these things.
@Sachlichkeit: “My sister is also allergic to shellfish, and when she eats out she ASKS the waitress if the grill used to cook her steak is also used to cook mussels/shrimp/salmon/calamari etc– Especially if she’s at a restaurant like Ruby Tuesdays with underpaid, overworked staff that probably serves over 500 people a night.”
I once worked in a small restaurant (not a chain) that was consistently voted “Best Veggie Burger” in town.
Yeah, they were great because they cooked them on the same grill as the burgers and soaked up all the delicious beef fat.
WalrusTaco HAS IT PERFECTLY! enough said.
WalrusTaco at 10:12 AM
Reply
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After 8+ years of waiting tables, I can tell you-
1: Waiters write down the wrong order all the time
2: Customers ask for the wrong order all the time
3: It is common for waiters to repeat the order
4: Even after waiters repeat the order, miscommunication still exists
5: You should ALWAYS disclose your allergies before ordering if you know they should be life threatening
I’ll let everyone else deal with the did he or didn’t he thing. Don’t people with serious allergies carry an Epi-Pen? My neighbor is allergic to nuts. He has to be careful at restaurants even when the dish he orders does not contain them. And he carries Epi in case of accidents. If you have these allergies, you would think one would take precautions.
I work at Red Lobster. We deal with seafood allergies all the time. People are either idiots or daredevils by coming to a seafood joint if they are allergic. People DO mix up what they order all the time. Ruby Tuesday’s version is not that out of the ordinary. It wasn’t the server’s fault if it was a dish mix up so she would have no reason to lie about it… especially if they have her written form and an account of the story
err… maybe it was a suicide.
Why didn’t this guy carry an Epi-Pen? I have one and I’ve only had a reaction to a wasp sting once when I was 8. Now I’m 35. They’re almost always on me.
I hate when people say, “I can’t stick myself with a needle.” Well, then I guess you’re going to die. Dying is so much better than a tiny needle stick, don’t you agree? Common sense, people.
@ian937262: Isn’t this stupid? I don’t go to bee farms for honey, because I’m allergic to stings. Isn’t it the same thing?
This is a tragedy no matter what your viewpoint or blame is intended to be. There is no indication that anyone purposely intended to harm the guest. There is also very little information specific to the incident that anyone knows right now.
To outright throw around accusations against the guest or the restaurant without any REAL knowledge of FACTS is both presumtious and futile. Is touting what you think going to bring this man back to life, or “bring down the corparate man”? No. This story involves real people in real situations. You can’t just toss the obligatory torch at the server who is trying to make ends meet just like you and I.
The sad part is that the people truely affected by this sad ordeal will have to think about it much longer than anyone who spent 45 secs posting about it here. Because next week when you are blogging about some other hot topic, people still exist that were crushed in real life, doing real things, that you never had the misfortune of dealing with yourself.
@backbroken: “I guess my problem is that they just don’t have incontrovertible evidence. They refuted the unsubstantiated claims with their own shaky evidence.”
Well, to be completely fair, here, what other evidence could they have, apart from what they listed? It’s not as though restaurant order conversations are recorded for posterity. It sounds to me like they performed their own investigation and shared the results… a reasonable and responsible action for them to take in a case that is both delicate and potentially very damaging.
@HeartBurnKid: Along with most of the other commenters who have eaten this dish, I agree. I have had the Chicken Oscar at Ruby Tuesday’s, and the picture is pretty much spot on with how mine looked. It is, to me, very apparent that it is topped with seafood, such as crab or scallop.
It seems most likely to me, given the limited information we have, that this is indeed just a tragic accident. Maybe RT did make a mistake. Mistakes happen everywhere, and usually even in a restaurant setting, they are fixable and non-lethal. But I do feel the poor man who met his end this way has to share in at least a smidge of the responsibility. At best, he was negligent in not informing the server about his deadly allergy or perhaps not paying closer attention to what he was consuming… but I’m not going to accuse anyone of suicide and/or attempted fraud by purposeful consumption.
Right, because people with severe food allergies are SO good at gaming exactly how much it takes to get a little sick, but not die. Please feel free to take this gamble yourself to find out just how idiotic your post was. Just because you see a family member’s death as a lottery ticket doesn’t mean everyone does.
I’ve been around people with food issues (not always allergies, just preferences) who have specificially and clearly asked “can you tell me if this has X in it, the menu isn’t clear” or “I can’t eat X so can I please get this order and not the other one,” and they STILL GET THE WRONG FOOD. Sometimes waiters mess up. Sometimes they lie or don’t bother to check.
I have a friend with Celiacs Disease, an allergy to wheat gluten. Whenever we go out to eat he mentions repeatedly that he is allergic to wheat and cannot eat anything thats even been close to bread crumbs and the worse that happens when he eats it is a bad case of GI upset. If this guy had an allergy that could kill him so easily, he probably should have been a little more proactive with his own dietary safety. I mean seriously, I’ve gotten the wrong thing more than once and having waited tables, I know that it can be quite easy to give someone the wrong thing or take down the wrong order. I can’t fault the waiter or Ruby Tuesdays here. The guy should have paid more attention to what he was eating. Further, I know I will probably have a response like “way to blame the victim” BUT COME ON, people – including consumers – can be fucking morons. I think it’s just as possible that he ordered the wrong thing as it is that the waiter wrote down the wrong order.
I find it hard to believe this guy didn’t notice, I mean it’s not like he was a little allergic… he was fatally allergic which debunks the whole “he ordered it” story.
Sucks either way.
@backbroken:
How about “defending themselves.”
If someone were to set their dog under your tire, then threaten to sue you after you ran over it, wouldn’t you want to be sure that it was your fault BEFORE you admitted liability?
Same basic concepts apply here. RT may have been at fault, but it is, frankly, equally likely that the customer was at fault. I’ve been in plenty of restaurants where I’ve overheard someone at the next table say, several minutes after ordering, “What’s in that? …… Oh, I’m allergic to X, could you Y Z?”
If they are at fault, they deserve to pay – but the company is allowed just as much due process as the individual.
Not the restaurants fault. If you have an allergy that is deadly it is your job to inform the restaurant. In most cases you will get the following answer “Sorry but we can not guarantee that our food has not come in contact with what you are allergic to so we recommend you do not dine here.”
Mistakes happen, if you have a deadly food allergy it’s your job to avoid the mistakes.