ONE OF MY many bright ideas is to be an advice columnist. Not to offer advice, but to ask for it, to each week pose a deep and difficult philosophical question like "What kind of beans?" or how do you dance? or "What the hell is Swiss steak, and why?"

Except I can't figure out how to publish my questions and your answers at the same time, and to leave a week every week between the two would be just too convoluted, even for me. So ... see? It must of not of been such a bright idea after all.

But you know, my very first journalistic gig was advice columnist for my high school newspaper. For the first couple issues I made up the questions and the answers, and then, once they got the hang of it, my pimply peers filled the paper's mailbox with their heartfelt and sincere problems and dilemmas. However, as I found my own to be not only more interesting and amusing, but also infinitely easier to answer, my classmates never did get a word in edgewise.

I was reminded of all this recently when a loyal Cheap Eats reader wrote to me (me!) for advice, asking me (me!) to please not publish her letter in my column. Or at least not her name. I wasn't going to, but then, as my reply to her e-mail kept getting longer and longer, I realized I had something to say on the subject and I might as well get paid to say it.

Here goes: Your favorite restaurant, a neighborhood ma and pa joint where they know you by name, know what you like, know how you like it, and just generally treat you like somebody ... well, they have mice. Or at least a mouse. You saw it. They saw you seeing it, and they acted like it was no big deal.

But it kind of is, for you. As my reader-writer so eloquently put it, "I don't have to explain it to you that mice poop, and the poop could end up in places we'd rather it didn't." Like for example your omelet, I'm guessing you're thinking.

I'm with them: no big deal. Every house I've ever lived in has had, at one time or another, mice, roaches, ants, elk, and/or relatives passing through, helping themselves to my sunflower seeds, and leaving, in one way or another, their mark. Yet – though I found five or six mouse marks in the bottom of my frying pan just the other day, for example – I would never not eat at home or report myself to the Department of Health.

Now you say, yeah, but you're not a restaurant.

While there's some truth to this assertion, I figure like this: I figure, my kitchen is rarely if ever inspected by inspectors. Restaurants run that risk, and they live with it literally all day long. And the heat is on, very, very literally. The frying pan is frying. I use mine maybe once, twice, three times tops in any given day. Mice exist and shit happens. If there were six mouse turds in my skillet today, and I saw them, and washed them out, who's to say how many there were on how many other days, over the course of my life, and maybe I didn't see them before I fried my eggs? Maybe I was in more of a hurry, or less awake.

In other words: I'm willing to bet that I have eaten shit. In my own home! And that, though I run as tight a ship as I run, still, my odds of eating shit at home are greater than my odds of eating shit in a restaurant. Any restaurant. They all have critters. Let's just assume that. They all have cooks, let's assume, who are human and who sweat and come to work with nasal congestion and ear wax and all kinds of things you almost never see in recipes.

The really important question here is, So?

Recent studies, scientific research, and 9 out of 10 dentists will back me up on this: that constantly worrying about such things stands to be in the long run more detrimental to your health than eating the occasional bug, mouse doo-doo, or severed finger.

And (and this is a big and) favorite restaurants are hard to come by. They close. They burn down. They change owners and go downhill. I speak from experience. Every favorite restaurant I've ever had has broken my heart. That's why when people ask me what my favorite restaurant is I burst into tears and crumble to the floor.

If your favorite restaurant has critters, my advice, since you asked, is to forgive them. My guess is that all the other ones do too. Maybe you haven't seen them yet. And maybe what you don't know won't hurt you. Well, most probably what you do know won't hurt you either.

But what do I know?

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).