Where Not to Eat

Local Scribe Sickened After Meal at Hard Rock Café at the Wharf

Intrepid reporter Beth Spotswood just bestowed on us her latest Tourist Trapped column, and the subject of the week is the Hard Rock Café on Pier 39. (As always, better her than us.) She and a friend braved the mobs of August tourists and managed to get seated right away, but perhaps ordering the seemingly safe Jumbo Combo appetizer sampler was the wrong move. Something, either the Santa Fe Spring Rolls or the hickory-smoked chicken wings or perhaps the “Tupelo” chicken tenders, made them both feel sweaty and ill about twenty minutes after leaving, clutching their stomachs the whole way home. It brought to mind Spotswood’s earlier forays to Hooters, Joe’s Crab Shack, and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., which, by comparison, was a four-star meal. “Now that I think about it,” she writes, “[We] didn’t consider going to the emergency room after dining at Bubba Gump’s.” [Tourist Trapped/SFGate, Earlier]

Local Scribe Sickened After Meal at Hard Rock Café at the Wharf