Georgia Restaurant's Eggplant Parmigiana Sends Women Into Labor
An Italian restaurant is turning heads, and not for spaghetti and meatballs. Scalini's, located in Atlanta, Georgia, has been helping women for years — by inducing their pregnancies with eggplant parmigiana.
Today.com reports that anywhere from two to six women come to Scalini's each day in hopes that the dish will give their baby that extra push. Supposedly, one or two have even had their water break before they had the chance to ask for the check.
"That's always exciting when that happens. Once, a father came up and said, 'Can we get our food to go?' I think his wife really wanted to get going to the hospital, though," restaurant manager Robert Bogino told Today. He asks that pregnant patrons sign the restaurant's "baby book," and if they go into labor within 48 hours of leaving Scalini's, they win a $25 gift certificate, a Scalini's infant T-shirt, and their baby's photo on the wall (there are nearly 300 pictures up already).
If moms-to-be are unable to make it into Scalini's, they can find a secret recipe for the eggplant parmigiana online. Women around the globe have recreated the dish and later shared photos of their "Eggplant Babies" on the restaurant's site.
Tons of restaurants make this Italian specialty, so what makes Scalini's so magical?
"Two or three years after we began, a few people had just mentioned to us [that] they came in when they were pregnant, and ate this eggplant, and had a baby a short time after that," John Bogino, Robert's father, told Good Morning America. "One person told another, and it just grew by itself by leaps and bounds."
Another restaurant, Hawthorne's New York Pizza & Bar in Charlotte, North Carolina, has also been known to induce pregnancies with buffalo chicken wing pizza. While these things might prove exceptional for past-due dates, here are 8 things you shouldn't eat or drink during a pregnancy.