Spaghetti Seagull

You may have heard about New York’s famous pizza rat. Today I’m going to introduce you to Nice’s notorious spaghetti seagull.

Picture yourself enjoying a leisurely lunch on a restaurant terrace. It’s a beautiful day.

You’re trying not to eavesdrop on a neighboring conversation as to whether breaking spaghetti in half before cooking it is a murderous offense in Italy. Your pizza is delicious, your husband’s pappardelle is wonderful. Life is good.

The man asking about the pasta offense (to which the answer is a resounding yes, “unless you’re making soup”) gets up and goes inside. Intent on enjoying the pizza—cacao e pepe with ham, you don’t see the massive bird swooping down until the deed is done. In the blink of an eye, a giant seagull is flying away with spaghetti streaming from his beak!

When the guy came back, “This might sound like a weird question, but were you finished eating?”

“No.”

Oops. Done now.

“A big seagull just came and carried off your lunch.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope, we didn’t see him until he was taking off with a beak full of spaghetti and red sauce.”

Shaking his head, the man, Alvin, went back into the restaurant. He came out with the waiter, saying that he was never going to believe what happened.

We told him the story and he just started laughing. They both walked over to where Alvin had been sitting to inspect the scene of the crime. Picking up the dish, the waiter took it inside, where we could hear him chuckling and explaining to the chef what had happened.

Even though he had missed out on half his lunch, Alvin insisted on buying us another round of wine. I offered him a slice or two of my pizza to make up for the missing spaghetti.

Within a few minutes we were all fast friends. Fabio was the waiter, Alvin turned out to be a contractor, and a regular at Senso . He introduced us to the rest of the staff, all of whom were laughing at the story of the bird who will now be known as Spaghetti Seagull. Watch out pizza rat!

Since he was so fast, the seagull photo is a stock photo and the pappardelle photo was taken by Frank.

Update: Sometimes good things come from weird ones. We’ve kept in contact with Alvin and he’s about to start painting our newly purchased apartment.