On Monday we found ourselves driving home to DC from NY. It’s about a 5 hour trip, and by the time we got close to Baltimore we were hungry and Aliza has complaining about having spent several hours cramped in her car seat. Since it was also the start of rush hour, we decided to stop in Baltimore for dinner before continuing home. A quick search of google maps later and we decided on Kosher-Bite. They claimed to be family friendly, had a wide variety of food, and having eaten pizza for 2 of the last 3 meals, we were in the mood for something different.

When a restaurant claims to offer four different cuisines, you don’t expect them to do most of them well, but you at least expect them to be honest about it. When we got inside we discovered that half the things on the website (including the Chinese and Russian food) were simply not there. All they had was fast food, deli, some Israeli food, and sushi that looked like it had been sitting there for far too long. Well no matter, we really weren’t in the mood to be picky, we we ordered a shwarma in a lafa for me, and a felafel platter for Rebecca. The way it works is you place your order and pay, and then someone who barely speaks English comes to actually assemble your food for you. He pulled out a plate and said “what do you want”. (Meaning which salads). I told him I wanted to start with the shwarma (because I didn’t want to order for Rebecca). He said okay. I explained that the shwarma was supposed to be in the lafa, not the platter. He said okay. I clarified again that this was not a platter (he was still holding the plate). He acknowledged me. I eventually guessed that he was just putting the foods on the plate first, before transferring them to the lafa. I ordered what I wanted. When he was done, he added felafel balls to the plate, put it on a tray, picked up a lafa, and said “now, what do you want on the shwarma?” I could have strangled him. I ordered the same things again, he put them in the lafa. When it came time to add the meat, I noticed he didn’t cut the meat off the spit (as is normal), but had the meat in a container on the side. I assumed he had simply cut off the meat while I hadn’t been looking and promptly forgot about it.

Until Tuesday that is. I don’t want to go into graphic details, but let’s just say I spent a lot of time praying to the porcelain goddess.

On the plus side, we were looking for a restaurant which wouldn’t mind if we had a 1 year old who occasionally dropped food on the floor. I can assure you that they didn’t mind, notice, or care about the cleanliness of their floors, so I guess that’s a good thing.

Anyway, that’s my story about how kosher-bite gave me food poisoning. This is ironic because it’s apparently tradition for someone to get food poisoning on super bowl weekend, so having missed it last year, I guess it was my turn this year.

Update: It turns out that others agree that Kosher bite gives you food poisoning.