Random People Reveal Nastiest Things They've Ever Found In Their Food At A Restaurant (22 items)

• (#1) Clumps Of Fur From A Dead Cat

  From Redditor /u/WomblesMama:

  "My uncle is a health inspector in rural Australia. He got several complaints about a fish n chips shop in a small town in Victoria, with reports of it being a bit grotty and people getting chunks of hair in their hot chips.

  So he rocks up one day unannounced on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer, and the owner greats him and shows him around wearing a white singlet top with sweat patches under the arms, short shorts and no shoes. This guys [sic] body was covered in hair. Not just on his arms and chest, but his back and neck were like a werewolf. Clearly, this must be the source of the hair in the chips. My uncle decides to make a tactful comment about having wear appropriate clothes when working, so as to protect against hot oil burns.

  After seeing the property and giving a few basic suggestions, the only other thing he notices that needs immediate attention is the deep fryer itself. The oil is old and filthy, and likely full of this guys [sic] hair, so he orders the bloke to drain it out right then and there. The owner does so, and at the bottom of the oil vat is a dead, deep fried and crispy... cat. Totally unphased [sic], the owner simply said 'oh, that's where my cat went!'

  Turns out a few months previously the shop was having a rodent problem, so the owner bought in a cat to catch them. He thought the cat escaped overnight and ran away. Nope. Looks like little Fluffy drowned in the deep frying oil, and Mr Chippy has been frying him up over and over and over again ever since. The clumps of hair locals were complaining about weren't from the half-man-half-wolf owner, but the fur and flesh of a dead cat."
• (#2) Rat Poison

  From Redditor /u/Pizzadude:

  "Rat poison.

  Actually, my girlfriend is a health inspector, so it was a tough choice for the worst, but when she found people handling a rodent issue by putting D-Con on the food, it was probably the most dangerous.

  She has also found earwigs in a bottle of rum, tons of fruit flies in assorted bottles of alcohol (screened pour spouts people!), cockroaches on and in pretty much everything possible, and more mouse and rat sh*t in and around food than you would ever want to know.

  While not working, she found a used band-aid in some McDonalds fries. Hint: if you let something like that get into a health inspector's food, you're about to have a very bad day."
• (#3) Billions Of Maggots

  From Redditor /u/Craig5005:

  "Past food safety inspector here. Was inspecting a pizza place. They use a 'proofer' to prepare dough (think a big, warm, humid cabinet). I opened it up and a million flies flew at me. I closed the door and looked through the glass. Someone had left a tray of dough in the proofer for a very long time. The tray was filled with what seemed like a billion maggots. The dough had obviously been turned to liquid at this time. The manager of the store tried to tell me it was only left overnight. They will lie no matter what."
• (#4) A Pubic Hair

  From Redditor /u/Cheef_q*eef:

  "Not a restaurant but there's a Harley bar in Okinawa near Camp Foster. I ordered a jack and coke and there was a hair frozen into the ice cube. It was about a foot long. As I'm holding it up, the bartender/owner looks over and without skipping a beat, says "C*nt hair, that'll cost you extra."

  I tossed it aside and finished my drink cuz I ain't no b*tch."
• (#5) A Deep-Fried Scouring Pad

  From Redditor /u/QuidProQuo_Clarice:

  "Not in my food, but at a restaurant I worked at:

  This was one of those fried chicken fast-food places. A customer came up to me with her food tray in hand looking distressed and physically ill. I asked if I could help her with something, and she showed me the remains of her 'chicken' sandwich. The filet was oddly flat and green between the breading. Turns out one of the green industrial scouring pads (used? Who knows) had been breaded, deep-fried, and served in a sandwich. I'm still convinced that was intentional (because let's be real, how could it not be?) but the culprit was never found.

  Other notable incidents:

  -Someone put coleslaw dressing in the soft-serve ice cream machine, and this poor kid got a coleslaw cone and cried.

  -A customer asked for 'half and half coke,' which my co-worker took to mean coke mixed with half-and-half creamer

  Edit: I just recalled another incident. This was another restaurant nearby where a new guy sweetened the iced tea with some sort of cleaning powder that apparently resembled sugar. The woman was hospitalized. It made local news and our restaurant owner sent an email to everyone stressing the importance of not killing our patrons."
• (#6) A Safety Pin

  From Redditor /u/meowzmeow:

  "Technically this was at a movie theater, not a restaurant. I was with my family at the local movie theater and we had gotten there a little early. I was munching away on my popcorn without a care in the world, waiting for the lights to dim and the previews to start. I had been talking to my parents while shoveling the popcorn into my mouth when my mom stopped mid-sentence and grabbed my arm to stop me. She exclaimed, 'what is that??' We stared down at the kernel in my hand and could barely make out something small and round on it, but it was hard to make out as it was covered in that yellow powdery popcorn seasoning. At first glance, we thought it may have been a bug but we realized it was actually the cap of an OPEN SAFETY PIN with a piece of popcorn wedged into it! Thankfully the lights were still on or I would have blindly shoved the entire thing in my mouth. We now get free popcorn/snacks for life at this theater. They know us as the 'safety pin' family."
• (#7) A Bloody Bandaid

  From Redditor /u/woo_hoo:

  "When I was a trainee chef, many years ago, a friend was given the task of preparing hamburgers for a large event. At some some stage in the day he had cut himself and put on a band aid. Now, halfway through preparing a 20 gallon container of burger mince, he suddenly realised that the band aid was missing. He and I searched through the mince but could not find it. He eventually had to go and tell the Executive Chef about it. As it was a very remote place and there was no chance in hell of getting in new meat before the function, the Exec Chef decided to serve the burgers anyway. Nobody complained, but that probably just means that someone ate it without noticing."
• (#8) Glass Shards

  From Redditor /u/WasabiBomb:

  "At a cajun restaurant in Austin, TX, about 12 years ago, on a muffaletta sandwich:

  Shards of glass.

  No kidding. The manager had no idea how the glass could've gotten there, since the olive paste they used came in a metal can.

  He asked me if I wanted another one - I declined."
• (#9) A Fake Fingernail

  From Redditor /u/WebSmurf:

  "I was a debate geek in HS and college. On a HS trip to a tournament, the team stopped at some local pizza joint (not a chain). As we were eating, drinking, etc., my friend gets to the bottom of his glass of Coke, Pepsi, whatever it was and discovers a fake fingernail that had clearly fallen off of someone's finger as it still had the glue, etc. on the inside. Turns out, it had fallen off of our waitress' finger and into his drink. Did I mention that it was also clearly dirty? I have a strong stomach and I still gag a little when I think about it."
• (#10) Vicodin Pills

  From Redditor /u/johnnyutah20:

  "No joke. In Portland at Bitter End... my wife got a salad that had 4 vicodin pill sprinkled on top. I know because we looked up the pill number. Kind of cool to be served opiates... but kind of weird. Definitely not expected. Possibly fell out of kitchen worker's pocket? The owner was absolutely appalled an embarrassed. We didn't make a huge stink about it. I think heads rolled later in the kitchen."
• (#11) A Dead Spider

  From Redditor /u/walklikewings:

  "This is one I'll never forget about. I can't eat whole fish because of it.

  My parents and I were out... somewhere, when I was little. Mom orders a whole/almost whole fish (as opposed to fillets), cuts into part of it aaaand somehow, there's a f*cking spider inside. A big, brown spider in a cavity inside the fish. I still haven't figured it out. Yes, it was dead. I don't remember every little detail though I'm sure I could ask my parents to refresh me, but as a child, this sh*t gave me nightmares. I think the fish was deep fried? At least that's the image I get when I remember it. Shudder."
• (#12) A Cigarette Butt

  From Redditor /u/RobBobLoblaw:

  "A friend found a cigarette butt in her fries at a restaurant we loved going to because of the great outdoor seating. The butt was white. We brought it up to the manager and he blamed us for putting in there. We pointed out that the few people who had cigarettes were smoking camels with brown colored butts. He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. The waitress was mortified. He didn't comp the meal or anything. We tipped the waitress appropriately because she was sympathetic, and we did not leave money for that entree."
• (#13) A Dirty Bandage

  From Redditor /u/FunGal_in_SoCal:

  "A dirty bandage in my spanish rice at a mexican fast food place. DISGUSTING!!!!! I nearly threw up, tossed the food out, and tried hard to forget about it....till today. Thanks."
• (#14) Roach Innards

  From Redditor /u/badassmthrfkr:

  "I went to a scrappy Chinese carry-out and ordered lo mein with some meatballs on the side. When I cut into a meatball, I squished the roach inside and white stuff goozed out. I almost gagged and I brought my tray to the Chinese lady on the counter. She spoke no English so my complaint was useless but she clearly saw what the problem was. She took my plate to the trashcan, pushed just that meatball into the garbage, and scooped on another meatball onto the same plate and gave it back to me."
• (#15) Weeks-Old 'Soup Of The Day'

  From Redditor /u/davendak:

  "My Dad was [a health inspector], is now retired... He noted the trays at a Chinese restaurant weren't clean or warm. When he asked the employees, they acknowledged the heating element had failed, but that there was still chemical backup. Somehow, though, it wasn't hitting the dishes. Then he saw a cockroach crawl out of the washer. Attempting to understand how the dishes were not getting rinsed, he found that it was backed up with cockroaches. They were 'cleaning' the trays. They 'closed for remodeling' for 3 days, but it was really cleaning up in order to pass inspection before they were allowed to open again.

  At a similar restaurant, he asked about a pail on the floor filled with a green substance. 'Soup of the day,' they told him. Dad asked what it was, and was told it was scraps. The bucket was never emptied, it turned out. The scraps going in roughly equaled the soup going out, which meant that there was stuff in there that had been there for weeks at room temp, on the floor. Dad had them dump it as he looked on."
• (#16) A Slug

  From Redditor /u/verte_aile:

  "A slug. It was in my bento box. Luckily, I hadn't touched the food yet. I called the waiter over, and pointed it out. She thought I was asking what the food was, so she started explaining. I shook my head, and pointed again. She yelped, and took the food away.

  A few minutes later, she apologised, and gave me a fresh one. It turns out that they used prepacked lettuce, and the slug must have come in the bag. They were really apologetic, and gave me a voucher for next time.

  Still my favourite restaurant. 10/10 would eat there again."
• (#17) A Whole Grasshopper

  From Redditor /u/tedofgork:

  "I was a few bites into eating my salad, and there was one particularly interesting shiny piece of lettuce. I stab it with my fork and pull it out.

  This was no piece of lettuce, this was a wing and body of a huge dead grasshopper in the middle of my salad. I flung my fork across the room in panic.

  I will never return."
• (#18) Baked Cockroaches

  From Redditor /u/BorgQueen:

  "My dad and his work friends found 4 cockroaches baked into the crust of their pizza at an Indonesian pizza hut. The store wasn't going to refund them so he asked for them to put it in a box for him so he could take it to the local newspaper. Needless to say he got his money back."
• (#19) Worms, Hair, And A Spider

  From Redditor /u/Meloosh13:

  "I found a worm in my soup at a diner. I' ve had a tuna sandwich that was about 50 percent hair. And the worst one: There was an on campus bakery responsible for all of the schools [sic] bread. It was pulled pork day and spirits were high. I was halfway through my sandwich when I set it down upside down. Lo and behold, baked into the bottom of my roll, a big f*ck off spider, less a couple of legs. I threw up as hard as humanly possible. I inspect every roll I get now. My life is a magnet for bad food luck."
• (#20) A Squashed Spider

  From Redditor /u/Drift0r:

  "6th grade school cafeteria lunch. I opened up by hamburger to put some more ketchup on it only to find a big f*cking spider smooshed in it. Not a tiny one, but one about the size of a 50 cent piece all hairy and smashed all over my burger.

  Worst part is that I showed it the cafeteria people to get a new burger they accused me of putting it in there on purpose to prank them or something. I guess that sort of thing must have happened often. I didn't get a new burger and just went hungry."
• (#21) A Used Bandaid

  From Redditor /u/gnujack:

  "I worked in a courthouse and one of the judges had a case where a teenage girl at a Chinese buffet restaurant sued because she found a bandaid inside a fried dumpling. Her family had her tested for aids, hepatitis, etc. all tests came back negative.

  The restaurant's lawyer offered a lowball settlement amount of $4,500. His argument: while gross, the girl wasn't really injured. the family argued that the girl went through high school known as the 'AIDS girl' due to the incident. This was South Philly - not a place known for sensitivity and respect.

  Case went to trial and she got $4 million. While Philly residents are insensitive, their jurors are also pretty generous.

  Mediators still show that verdict to defense lawyers who give lowball offers."
• (#22) A Staple And A Live Grub

  From Redditor /u/RideReddy:

  "A packing staple. The waiter looked at me like I was a d*ck for mentioning it. I guess I was supposed to just remove it and keep eating. I never went back there.

  Also, I found a fat, inch-long grub in my broccoli at a Chinese buffet once. Right as I found it the waitress was checking on us. She asked, 'How is everything?' I replied, 'I'm doing fine, but this little guy is having a bad day,' as I held the plate up for her to see.

  She apologized sincerely and gave me my meal for free."

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