Daniel Bolud at work (Image; YouTube)

Forget the proverbial fly in the soup. Celebrity chef Daniel Boulud has been ordered to fork over $1.3 million after a customer at one of his restaurants swallowed a piece of wire in his food (an order of coq au vin) and required emergency surgery.

From Agence France-Presse via The Guardian:

The customer, Barry Brett, went with his wife in February 2015 to db Bistro Moderne in midtown Manhattan. It is one of Boulud’s several establishments in new [sic] York, including Daniel, a Michelin two-star restaurant.

Shortly after he began eating, Brett felt something lodged in his throat and had to leave the restaurant, according to court documents.

The wire eventually caused a potentially fatal infection, his lawyers argued.

The surgeon said the wire was an inch long (2.5cm) and had come from a cheap grill brush.

A New York jury ruled last week the restaurant had been negligent, awarding Brett $300,000 and fining the restaurant an additional $1m in punitive damages. Another $11,000 went to Brett’s wife.

Staff at the restaurant, which opened in 2001 and is known for its gourmet burgers, declined to comment. Its attorneys were not immediately available.

Those are some tasty burgers. (Image: db Bistro Moderne)

One of them told the New York Post the restaurant planned to appeal.

The restaurant plans to appeal? On what grounds? That they didn’t charge the customer extra for ingesting a piece of damaged kitchen equipment?