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| - Food poisoning for two, please...
I am really confused by all the 4-star and 5-star reviews for this place. The 4-star average Yelp rating was the reason my wife and I chose to dine here during our stay in Phoenix. Yelp, you really let us down this time.
So I was on company business travel in Phoenix the week of March 12th and my wife was traveling with me. We had a French impulse that Tuesday night and tried to crash Petite Maison in Scottsdale, only to find out that reservations were required and there were no tables available. The following night, still craving French cuisine, we decided to stop in at Sophie's French Bistro in Phoenix.
The first warning sign was that the place was entirely empty during peak dinner hours. However, encouraged by the strong reviews on Yelp, we decided to go ahead and order. We took advantage of a couple of happy hour specials and ordered the following...
3 Cheese Plate
Chef's Pate
Calamari
Crispy Duck Breast
Creme Brulee
The food was average at best. My wife and I both tend to critique food as we eat it, and we both found ourselves commenting that the portions were small and the food was overpriced for what it was. Most of what we ate was bland and the pate had a very odd flavor and consistency.
The fun started about 4 hours later when we were back in our hotel room. We both started experiencing various internal moaning and groaning, followed by the onset of stomach pain. No big deal, I thought...
By shortly after midnight, we were each fighting for time in the bathroom, taking turns to vomit up everything we had eaten that night. I'll try to spare you the details, but this was the kind of violent and uncontrollable vomiting that I have only experienced perhaps once before in my entire life. Needless to say, diarrhea was also involved.
After going through this for a good two hours, my wife and I were both thoroughly exhausted and dehydrated. My wife even told me she felt like she was dying, and said that she had never felt this bad before - not even during child birth. o.O
So by around 2:30am, my wife was begging for me to call an ambulance. For a while, neither of us could get up off the floor to reach the telephone. I eventually found a break in the vomiting and managed to sip down enough water to recover slightly. I carried my wife out to the car and asked the hotel receptionist for directions to the nearest hospital.
We drove to John C. Lincoln Hospital on Dunlap, which I recommend if you ever get poisoned by Sophie's French Bistro. I managed to get there without hitting anything, which was remarkable since I could barely see straight and could barely function at all.
Once inside, my wife completely collapsed and was unconscious briefly. The nurses and doctors rushed her into the ER and brought her back around. They gave her a shot of morphine and then hooked her up to an IV drip of fluids. As I waited, I continued to experience vomiting and tried to keep myself hydrated. Despite being in a hospital, I was determined not to check myself in for treatment, not wanting to add further medical bills.
Sometime around 5:00am, my wife was ready to be discharged. The official diagnosis was acute food poisoning. We were never able to identify the specific meal at Sophie's which poisoned us, as we both shared the same courses and ate equal amounts each.
However - and this is the kicker - when the doctors asked us where we had eaten dinner and we told them it was Sophie's, they remarked "oh, that place!". We learned that the ER at John C. Lincoln has seen 3 other cases of food poisoning caused by Sophie's. The hospital took our information for the purpose of compiling a complaint against Sophie's with the AZ Department of Health Services. They told us that once they have at least 10 confirmed cases, then they are required by law to report the incident as a disease outbreak.
This all would have been nice to know before we chose to dine at this place. I can only assume that the other poisoning victims either don't use the internet, or are still laying in a pool of vomit somewhere, too weak to write a review.
Please, please, PLEASE don't put yourself through the same hell that we went through that night. After this experience, we lost all desire to dine in Phoenix ever again. Thanks, Sophie's, for ruining our trip.
For the record, we did have an excellent meal at CIBO Pizza the night before we were poisoned. I highly recommend CIBO. Great food, without food poisoning.
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