like_the_grand_canyon/flickr

Turkey sandwich

First things first: Do not panic. Yes, there is a needle in your turkey sandwich. Yes, it is poking out from its little temporary home between the mayo and the lettuce. The needle is sharp. It is there. But do not panic. Do not necessarily leap to the conclusion that midflight meals are the terrorists' latest concern. There are a number of perfectly plausible explanations for how and why that needle ended up in your turkey sandwich on July 15 as you flew from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. Turn the page for the four that occurred to us.

More »

Food Network/Alan Poulin

Guy Fieri, happy again

The Associated Press reports that celebrity chef Guy Fieri can finally start driving his stolen $200,000 bumblebee yellow 2008 Gallardo Spyder convertible to all those diners and dives again. Max Michael Wade, 17, of San Rafael, was charged yesterday with an assortment of crimes: two counts of attempted murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, commercial burglary, receiving stolen property and vehicle theft -- of Fieri's Lamborghini, which was recovered more than a year after it was stolen.

Wade, who turns 18 this summer and was charged as an adult, was arrested after sheriff's investigators tracked down the teenager's rented storage container. Inside of which, according to the Marin Independent Journal, they found quite the anarchist's grocery list. What was inside?

More »

Lee Bennett/Flickr

Playing a taco the way you play a harmonica just isn't possible. So maybe that's why a Florida man stabbed another man for allegedly trying to grab harmonicas instead of a bag of tacos from his car.

Sheriff deputies in Sarasota County, Fla., said 52-year-old Bruce Richard Hood offered to give a man a ride from a bar on Feb. 25 and the two stopped at a Taco Bell on the way home so that the passenger could purchase a bag of tacos (no estimate as to how many). When Hood dropped the passenger off, the man grabbed what he thought was his bag of tacos. But Hood apparently thought the passenger purposely grabbed a bag of harmonicas from the vehicle.

More »

Torrance-based Seafood Solutions Inc. was sentenced yesterday to pay $1 million in fines and community service payouts for falsely labeling frozen fish fillets. (You mean those Gorton's fish sticks weren't mahi mahi? We, for one, are shocked.)

More »

Flickr/shutterbeant

The Tell-Tale Burrito

If you keep up with the LAPD police blotter, or perhaps are just are a civic-minded Mexican food enthusiast, you may have heard about the Los Angeles County deputy who was recently charged with trying to smuggle a bean and cheese burrito filled with heroin into the Airport Courthouse. Yes, you read that right: a bean-cheese-heroin super combo. Sometime between January and February of 2010 Sheriff's deputy Henry Marin allegedly conspired with an unknown woman to deliver a burrito stuffed with a "secret ingredient" to the courthouse jail, the contents of which would be later sold to inmates.

Since we're fairly certain that Chipotle doesn't offer heroin as an optional topping (we'll have to double-check at Freebirds), there seems little doubt that this crime represents another chapter in the burrito's dubious history as smuggling device.

More »

Anne Fishbein

a Slaw Dogs hot dog

A U.S. District court arraigned two men last week for selling guns and methamphetamine to undercover officers at a San Jose hot dog stand. After multiple drug and weapon transactions, the feds finally arrested 58-year-old Jose Gilberto Ortiz on Sept. 2. His partner in food-stand-crime is alleged to be 23-year-old Guillermo Gonzalez Castillo, who hails from Los Angeles.

More »

Images of Money / Flickr

In the end, crime didn't pay for Tara Moore. The former bookkeeper was booked yesterday on charges of embezzling $3 million from San Diego area restaurant Jack's La Jolla.

More »

lesbal123

El Chavo

There's an update on the condition of the Silver Lake restaurant employee who was shot and seriously wounded last weekend in an apparent road rage incident. Sadly, Juan David Vasquez Loma (who goes by David Vasquez), an employee of two popular silver Lake restaurants, El Chavo and Garage Pizza, is on life support and has been declared brain dead, reports our sister blog, The Informer.

More »

ahisgett/Flicker

Ginichi Y. Ohira, 50, the Gardena seafood vendor who imported endangered whale meat from Tokyo and sold it to Southern California sushi restaurants, including the now-closed The Hump, pleaded guilty plea on Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court to a misdemeanor charge of knowingly selling a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose. He'll be sentenced on September 27th for the crime, a violation of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Ohira faces a maximum penalty of one year in federal prison, one year under supervised release and a fine of $100,000.

More »

Food Network/Alan Poulin

Guy Fieri

Ah, the perils of fame, money and expensive cars. And no, sorry, this is not a Charlie Sheen story. Food Network star Guy Fieri (Minute to Win It, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives) had his $200,000-plus Lamborghini sports car stolen, and not just ripped off by any old thief, but someone who has obviously been watching way too many old Tom Cruise movies.

Yesterday morning, the thief broke into a San Francisco car dealership by climbing onto the roof and rappelling into the showroom using mountaineering tools. He or she then unlocked the garage door and drove away in the bumblebee yellow 2008 Gallardo, leaving behind the climbing gear. Given the car's exclusivity and rather dramatic color, the San Francisco police do not think the thief will get very far. Although, since the car can hit speeds of up to 190 mph, you never know.