Aperitivo + Buffet Warning: FOOD POISONING!

dgashburn, I have done some food service inspections in the past. Salad bars are most common source of food poisonings in restaurants in US, mostly due to failure to maintain temperature or a sick employee handling the prepared food (after cooking).

(1) If you went to see a doctor or pharmacist, I would ask them where & how to report it.

(2) hopefully, not an offer for complimentary meal.
(3) I don't judge a place so much as carefully select the food. No seafood that has been sitting out, for example. No warm salad dressings or creamy things. No way to judge a clean kitchen or employee hygiene from the table.

are you sure it was from that meal? Not the gelato a little earlier, or the previous meal? Sometimes the bug takes a little time to build up steam...

The safe practice required by law (at least in Fla) of bringing a clean plate to the buffet each time makes sense, and from now on we won't be having "eat all you want" buffets w/o it! Consider -- after I eat off of my plate and return to the buffet w/ my germs on my plate, I handle the "common" utensil to place more food on my plate -- w/o thought, I touch the common utensil to my "germy" plate and put the utensil back into the dish. Now I've shared my germs w/ every person who takes from the same dish. Let's multiply that by the 50 people in the restaurant...

Traveling comes w/ some risks -- it would seem smart to AVOID buffets where "new" plates aren't offered on return visits to the buffet!

Thanks, Stan -- checking w/ the farmacia is a good route for informing others. And no -- not looking for a free meal -- just glad to be feeling better, as I'm still only eating toast 2 days later! My hope is to encourage better practice. The seafood pizza was also creamy -- I understand proteins to be the most likely offenders.

Nigel -- I hadn't eaten in several hrs (bike tour day).

As Nigel suggested, most cases of food poisoning are not from the preceding meal. Some bacteria (Staph) will have an effect within 6 hours. But most things take 12-24 hours. And there can be many sources of food poisoning, not just dirty plates. It is usually improper food handling- like someone handles raw chicken, doesn't wash his/her hands very well or doesn't clean the knife very well, and then handles fresh fruits and vegetables which aren't cooked so therefore won't kill the bacteria.

You are at risk anytime you eat outside of your own kitchen where you can watch the food be prepared. This is true in any country, any restaurant. I just go with my gut (no pun intended) and make sure dishes and bathrooms look clean. And I am pretty selective on buffets, American buffets included. The restaurant can have the strictest cleanliness standards but you can't stop another customer from sneezing on food or not washing his/her ands and touching a bunch of stuff.

I have had zero cases of food poisoning while travelling. However, I have gotten it from restaurants close to home about 4-5 times.

I've never in all of my European travels seen an all-you-can-eat buffet (other than breakfast). I've always thought that was just a bad "American" idea that the rest of the world just didn't do.

We ate at a restaurant in Rome years ago that had an antipasto buffet. You could take your plate and choose whatever you wanted. So we did. When we had finished eating and were waiting for our check, I noticed waiters approaching the antipasto bar with a plate with one or two items, and placing the items onto the buffet. I wondered why they were restocking with just one item at a time. And then I realized that these must be diners' plates, with uneaten items, that were being returned to the antipasto bar! I was horrified. And it made me question the wine ... was this carafe the dregs from others' glasses and bottles? We did not get ill, but I am now leery of buffets. By the way, I did put a report on Trip Advisor when we got home but had no response from the restaurant (Hosteria Romana).

Charlene, did you see actually see them placing customers' old food back on the buffet? At a buffet, restaurants often don't want to put out too much food at a time so that it doesn't go bad. I'm not sure what the reason was for the restaurant in your experience to do so, but could be other reasons to place an item or two at a time. It seems a little odd but I'm not sure I'd leap to the assumption that it was uneaten food.

And Tim, I'm not sure about buffets elsewhere in Europe but aperitivo is pretty common in Italy. Many bars have a buffet of snacks and dishes (pastas, some pizzas, fruit, etc) that they offer in the evening. You go and buy a drink, then the buffet is included.

I know how not-fun food poisoning can be. A room-temperature cheese-filled donut at Oktoberfest was the likely culprit that put my stomach out of commission for about a week, but that was one day out of hundreds in Europe without a similar problem. I think you have to chalk this up to experience, and random risk.

Thanks, Laura. I agree -- some random risk. Nothing is fail-safe.
My native-Roman friends say to be particular about where one eats seafood (it's just not a Roman staple).

As Aperitivo + Buffet increases in popularity -- and we tell visitors to ENJOY -- it would seem smart to observe
whether the place has a "clean plate" policy -- AND look for food that's consumed quickly out of the kitchen.

Buon Appetito!