ENTERTAINMENTJenna Bush Hager Reveals Sister Barbara Once Found a Bolt in Her Food: 'You Got to Send That Back!'
Jenna Bush Hager recalled the shocking moment her sister, Barbara, nearly swallowed a bolt on 'TODAY with Jenna & Friends.'
July 2 2025, Published 2:51 p.m. ET
Jenna Bush Hager looked back on a dangerous dining experience.
During the Wednesday, July 2, episode of TODAY with Jenna & Friends, the talk show host, 43, recounted the moment her sister, Barbara Bush, found a "bolt" in her food.
Jenna Bush Hager has a twin sister named Barbara.
"Here are my rules. I will tell you, one time I was at dinner in Washington, D.C., with a group of people, with my sister. I never send anything back," she explained. "I'm the type of person that will have a little sip of wine, and it will have gone bad and like, 'Guess I'm just going to drink this.'"
However, one particular instance served as an exception to Bush Hager's table etiquette.
"We were out to dinner. We were sitting down. She ordered a pasta dish, she took a bite, and there was a bolt," she recalled. "A bolt. Like, a screw that had fallen into her pasta. At that moment, I was like, 'You got to send that back. You got to tell them that there was a bolt in your food.'"
Barbara Pierce Bush encountered a bolt sitting in her meal.
The restaurant staff did not do anything to make up for the shocking mistake.
"You would think the restaurant would’ve been like, 'Can we pay for your pasta? Or we’ll send you an Aperol spritz,' which nobody drank back in 2000, but whatever. And no, they didn’t do that. They just were like, 'Sorry there was a bolt in your pasta,'" she said.
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Jenna Bush Hager doesn't like to return food to the kitchen.
Bush Hager admitted that she normally wouldn't send a dish back unless there was a "hairball" in it.
"You can have one bite of something, or one sip of something, and know that it's gone awry. And at that moment, one tiny bite, one tiny sip, you can send it back," she explained. "If it's half of the burger, all of the fries, you cannot do that. That's not fair, you know? You liked it enough to eat half of it. No. No, we're not doing that."
Jenna Bush Hager has three kids.
The host — who is married to Henry Chase Hager — said that if she were on a date with someone who sent their food back, she would look down upon them.
"If someone sent their food back, unless it really was disgusting, I would have a problem with it," she quipped.
Jenna jumped into her sister's story after showing a viral TikTok of an unhappy waiter. In the clip, a woman complained about a customer who returned their food to the kitchen, even when it was halfway eaten.
