The tuna was pretty good, we agreed.

We'd showed up a little late, Joel, Al and I. We decided to have tuna, everyone else was having steak.

Good choice, mmm. Nice to get good food for a change at a Dublin restaurant.

...

About halfway into the meal, Al mentioned that his mouth stung a bit. His gums. So did mine. Joel said his lips felt odd. The sauce? It wasn't the capers salad, Al hadn't touched his. Odd, but no big deal.

I finished my food, cleaned my plate. Joel complained of a headache. So did Al. And, come to think of it, I had a very mild one as well.

Then we all started to turn a bit red. Flushed, hot.

What an opportunity! Time for SCIENCE!

Right. Symptoms so far: stinging mouths, headaches, feeling flushed. Things in common: tuna. Steak eaters were all fine, we hadn't shared any other meals today.

OK.

Next debate: the relative merits of forced regurgitation. It seemed like a good, if unpleasant idea. It was decided that Joel would go puke immediately, Al would wait six hours and I'd be the control group and not puke at all. I would however have a whiskey and see if ingesting sterilizing liquids helped.

We decided that the odds we were going to die were rather slim, but discussed which emergency numbers work in Ireland just in case.

Finally we debated whether to complain. Al was too British, Joel too busy puking, and the steak-eaters were too confused. So I took it upon myself to make sure the restaurant didn't poison any other people. Our waiter brushed me off rather rudely, but his manager took the matter seriously and abandoned a very busy bar to do whatever managers do when they discover they've been poisoning their customers. This included telling off the waiter and making him make a very long involved phone call.

By this time our stomachs had started to make scary rumbly noises and we decided to head back to the office, which has much nicer toilets than most Irish pubs/restaurants. There we waited it out, watched youtube vids and drank lots of water.

...

Funnily enough, we were all having so much fun with our little science project, that none of us thought to actually Google info about food poisoning... until I got home and did just now:

"Gastroenteritis with paresthesias - nerve tingling - are the hallmarks of toxin-related seafood poisoning which also occurs without fever. Scombroid fish poisoning can be caused by tuna (including canned tuna), mackerel, bonito, skipjack, or mahi mahi. It is an explosive illness with flushing, headache, dizziness, nausea, cramps, and severe diarrhea. Symptoms usually resolve within 4 hours. Severe cases are treated with antihistamines or bronchodilators for wheezing or asthmatic patients."

Nice to know I've only got about 1-2 hours of this left. Scombroid fish poisoning is totally my food poisoning of choice. All the other ones last much longer...

Updated: It's the morning after, and I'm fine. :-)