80 people sick after attending LA Times food tasting festival

Painful cramps, nausea and vomiting were some of the symptoms some attendees experienced after attending a food festival held to celebrate Southern California's best restaurants. 

Mark Kapczynski was one of the 80 people who became sick after a norovirus outbreak. 

"It was pretty painful, probably the most painful experience I have ever had," he said. 

Kapczynski is still recovering from catching the highly contagious stomach bug at a place he never expected. 

"Certainly never thought it was the 101 event — these restaurants are too good couldn't possibly be that," he said.   

Kapczynski said he and his wife attended the Los Angeles times 101 Best Restaurants event earlier this month, a food-tasting festival celebrating what the newspaper's editors rank are the 101 best places to eat in Southern California. 

"We visited Providence, which I mean they are a world-class restaurant serving fresh oysters and clams with different sauces and I ended up having two plates very quickly," Kapczynski said. 

Kapczynski said he felt bloated immediately after eating the oysters. By the next day, his symptoms got worse. 

"The abdomen pain has just had just had me curled up in a ball and tremendous chills — just couldn't get comfortable," he said. 

Kapczynski isn't the only one who got sick from eating oysters. The LA County Department of Public Health is now investigating a norovirus outbreak. So far, they have identified 80 cases. Emergency room physician Dr. Ali Jamehdor said the illness isn't a typical stomach bug. 

"Oysters seem to really hit patients hard when they come into the ER they're very, very ill," he said. "Vomiting, diarrhea, significant abdominal cramping and it's all due to a bug called vibrio. It's a very specific bacteria that's specific to oysters and causes an illness that hits people very, very hard."

Providence, one of LA's most celebrated restaurants said the oysters came from farms near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Health inspectors at the event signed off on all handling and serving regulations. 

"The nature of norovirus is such that it would be undetectable to the vendor, the restaurant or the health inspectors who were onsite given that norovirus does not affect the appearance, odor or flavor of the shellfish," the restaurant wrote in a statement. 

The California Department of Public Health issued a statewide alert on Canadian oysters 10 days after the event. The warning said the shellfish could make people sick. 

KCAL News reached out to the LA Times but has not heard back yet. The FDA says people infected with the virus can experience symptoms for 12 to 48 hours.