Well, that’s just unfortunate.
I know we all jumped up Paula Deen’s drawly Southern ass for giving everyone diabetes and then selling diabetes drugs, but it’s not like one trip to a restaurant known for its heart-unhealthy cuisine is going to actually send a person into cardiac arrest, the condition for which the Heart Attack Grill is named. The joint has been a newsroom favorite for a long while, generally down to its unabashedly un-nutritious fare, its Hooters-like waitresses and its morbidly-inspired nomenclature.
The incident on Saturday night was not the first time the restaurant has been in the news for an unfortunate reason- last year, the establishment’s 29-year-old spokesman died , which also made headlines. And owner Jon Basso says that while the restaurant is tongue-in-cheek, the ill diner was upsetting to staff and diners:
“One of the nurses came back to me and said, ‘Dr. Jon, we’ve got a patient who’s in trouble… Tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that.”
One of the waitresses- called nurses- recounts the harrowing experience:
“He was having the sweats and shaking,” said ‘Nurse’ Bridgett, a waitress who was working at the restaurant when the man began to complain of chest pains in the midst of eating a ‘Triple Bypass Burger.’
Basso- who is not an actual doctor- called paramedics and the man was taken out on a stretcher. According to Fox News, the patient is alive and “recuperating” from the incident.
