Woman Says She Was Served Insect Larvae at Local Restaurant

A local woman said she endured a “horrifying experience” when she found a “large” insect larvae in her salad at a local restaurant.

Sara Tiemogo said she was at the Iron Abbey Gastro Pub in Horsham Thursday with friends and ordered a veggie wrap with a salad on the side. 

But she got something else on the side, too.

“On one of the leaves at the top of the salad was a large insect larvae,” Tiemogo said. Worse yet, when she touched the outside of the cocoon “it wiggled.”

Tiemogo said she contacted Patch not just because she was thoroughly grossed out by what she found in her meal. What made her upset was the way the restaurant handled the situation, she said.

Once she pointed out the larvae to the waiter, Tiemogo said she waited for a manager for more than an hour and still had to pay for a portion of her meal despite the fact that she didn’t eat it. 

“I understand that when you are working with fresh ingredients, these things can happen,” she said in her blog post, which you can find here.

Once the water took the plate with the salad, Tiemogo said she expected “someone to return and perhaps offer me something else to eat or ask what can be done to make the situation right, but that didn’t happen. I sat there feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable while I looked at my veggie wrap and the lettuce within it and contemplated whether it would be rude of me to decline eating it.”

She said she forced herself to eat a portion of the veggie wrap. About 30 minutes after the larvae was taken from the table, the waiter returned with another salad. 

“I had hoped that the waiter might come and perhaps offer to bring me something else, and I could ask for the nachos with no lettuce. I would have even paid for it. But he seemed to be avoiding our table,” she said in her blog.

Finally another employee, not a manager, returned to the table and said the restaurant would “comp” the salad. The restaurant took 20 percent off the bill and offered to box up her uneaten salad. “I told him I was not interested in it at all,” Tiemogo said.

After observing her bill, Tiemogo noticed she wasn’t fully refunded the full amount of the salad. She said she will not be returning to the restaurant.

Scott Toth, Iron Abbey’s brand development manager, said Friday morning he has been in touch with Tiemogo to investigate further.  “This is a first time complaint for something of this nature. All our salads come pre-packed and pre-cleaned by a third-party provider,” he said.