Woman Chomps on Chopped Finger at Chopt

Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Red Lobster losing millions on its Endless Shrimp deal.

A woman in Connecticut, upon allegedly finding a severed finger in her Chopt salad, is suing the chain for damages. It’s one thing to happen upon said finger by piercing it with a fork, but it’s another to discover it by inadvertently biting into it. This woman, unfortunately, falls into the latter camp of finger-in-salad discovery, she says, and she’s suing for “serious personal injuries” both emotional and physical. I hope she’s on the road to recovery, emotionally and physically—and same for the Chopt worker apparently short one finger.

Also this week, we became privy to Martha Stewart’s Dunkin’ order—“light coffee” and a French cruller (but only one bite of it). Subway added cookies to its foot-long canon. Doritos, meanwhile, developed a technology to silence the sound of chip-crunching in microphones, specifically angled toward gamers.

Read more below on this week’s food news around the internet.

There’s finger food—the tiny little snick-snacks you find at weddings and mitzvahs—and then there’s finger food. As in, food with a literal human finger in it. Greenwich, Connecticut woman Allison Cozzi faced the latter back in April, when she found herself “chewing on a portion of a human finger” that was mixed into her arugula salad, she testified. The Westchester County Department of Health fined the Mt. Kisco, New York location a measly $900 in September for failing to “avoid imminent health hazards”—in this case, the imminent health hazard being human flesh.

The slap on the wrist was simply not enough for Cozzi, who recently sued Chopt for negligence, saying the chain caused her “severe and serious personal injuries, including shock, panic attacks, migraine and the exacerbation of migraine, cognitive impairment, traumatic stress and anxiety, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and neck and shoulder pain.” Condolences to both the customer and the employee no doubt missing a critical portion of their left pointer finger. I’m rating this a 6/5 distressing. —Ali Francis, staff writer

---

Another day, another inexplicable Martha Stewart brand collaboration. I’ve written a fair amount about Martha in our beloved Delicious or Distressing column this year, and, quite frankly, I have lost count of the number of collabs the Martha machine has spit out. This one is with Dunkin’, for a branded martini shaker and glass. But the real prize of this ad campaign is our newfound insight into Martha’s very specific coffee order which is, wait for it, a coffee with one cream (no sugar) and a single bite of a cruller. What in the fresh almond-mom hell is going on here? “I’m not allowed to eat them”’ she told Today. Is there perhaps some shadowy unnamed entity defining the limits of what Martha Stewart can and can’t eat? We’ll never know for sure. If you’re worried about cruller waste, fear not: Martha reportedly gives the rest of her uneaten doughnut to her driver. For the uninformed, Martha’s been taking good care of her driver, saving him treats since at least 2016. I would normally rate this news distressing, but Martha’s goodwill has pushed this over the edge into delicious territory. I’m rating this news a simple, glazed 3.9/5 delicious. —Sam Stone, staff writer

---

There are few scents that haunt my nightmares like the heady wall of smells that hits you whenever you’re within a one block radius of a Subway. To put it mildly, I am not a fan of Subway sandwiches, although I have nothing but respect for the thousands of sandwich artists putting their blood, sweat, and tears (hopefully only figuratively) into these sandwiches. There is one menu item, though, that has cast its spell over me. They call out to me like a siren song whenever I smell that stale-bread-Subway smell. It’s the cookies. Now, it seems, Subway will release footlong cookies. It’s a gimmick it briefly tried in 2022 to great success, and it’ll be permanently available starting January 2024. Give the people what they want! After all, cookies are a profitable business to be in. My only hesitation is the “footlong” designation—Subway has, after all, had trouble measuring in the past. I’m giving this a soft, gooey 4.2/5 delicious. —S.S.

---

The Dorito’s Silencer, for anyone still blissfully unaware, is software that removes the sound of crunching chips from microphone transmission. That means that you can now eat crunchy chips on calls, or, yes, while gaming with a headset without disrupting other listeners. Phew! This is the kind of innovation we’ve been waiting for. Finally, someone is thinking of the gamers! Around the world, gamers are no doubt raising their Doritos crumb-laden headsets in the air victoriously. Distressing, I say! Embrace the loud crunch of corn chips, you cowards. This news deserves a full-blown 5/5 distressing. —S.S.