COLUMBIA, SC (CNN/WIS) -- A South Carolina woman got more than she bargained for in her oysters at a restaurant. Here's more about finding something strange in her food and it is good news!
Pamela Levi loves oysters. She says, "Very much so, for the obvious reasons. They're delectable, very delectable."
But she never thought one of her favorite foods would pay out. It happened Friday night at Goatfeathers in Columbia's Five Points. Levi, biting into an oyster, thought a foreign object had shattered a tooth. She says, "I thought 'I'm suing! I'm suing!' No, but I really thought I'd broken a tooth! Very ladylike, I'm trying to take this out of my mouth, It was round, so it kinda felt like a BB, Jeff was sitting across from me and he's the one who hollared out a pearl!"
Jeff Helsley says, "All of a sudden she's looking really weird and I look over and she pulls this pearl out of her mouth."
Goatfeathers owner Jeff Helsely worked as an oyster shucker growing up, but never saw a pearl quite like this. He says, "Somebody at the bar had gotten a really tiny one and he was bragging about that, and we said, uh, we showed him this one and it blew him away!"
Levi says, "When I was young I saw something on the news about someone finding a pearl in an oyster and I just thought that would be the ultimate, and so when it happened to me it was incredible."
And incredibly rare, as in one in the tens of thousands. That makes Levi one lucky lady. She says, "I don't play the lottery, however I did get a scratch off ticket the other day and won $75!"
That's probably more than she'll get for the pearl. Restaurant oysters aren't usually the ones that produce high-dollar gems, but it's at least worth a good story.