Status: Weird News (doesn't seem to be a scam)
A few days ago a Burger King restaurant in the Netherlands debuted a new dish: frog salad. The first customer of this dish, a 23-year-old woman named Astrid Roek, had not realized what she had ordered.
ABC News reports:
"What's happened is that one of our guests Thursday evening found a frog in her salad. She went to the manager and showed him the frog. He saw it was there and that's a fact," said spokeswoman Christine Frey. Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad quoted the customer, identified as 23-year-old Astrid Roek, as saying "it was a big black thing, a frog or a toad." She said she found the amphibian while halfway through her meal at the Burger King restaurant at The Hague's central train station. "I stood up and screamed the place upside-down," she told the paper. Roek has submitted a complaint to the Dutch Food and Wares Authority, but is not expected to sue for emotional damages or punitive damages in the matter: large compensation suits are virtually unknown in the Netherlands.
So just to clarify: Burger King hadn't intended for the frog to get in the salad, but somehow it got there anyway. They're not really serving Frog Salad. (Though that item might go over well in France.) The question is, did the woman put the frog there, or was it Burger King's fault? It sounds like BK is taking the blame for this incident. Given the frequency of these gross-stuff-found-in-food stories, I think I'll soon need to devote a separate page to them. (Thanks to Stephen for the link.)
Comments
Regarding the possibility of a law suit: in most European countries, it is considered almost unethical to sue a company when something like this happens to you. The frog was certainly not placed on purpose; the customer's "emotional damage" is, all things considered, very little (I mean, people can face tougher things in life, no?). Everybody can make a mistake, and it is "not done" to take advantage of somebody else's mistake to try and gain a small fortune.
And the French? They only like frog legs when they've been hacked of a live frog (making them "fresher"). Chef Kaz Yamamoto is a wuss in France.
Anyways, I would have kept the frog as a pet if it was still alive.
Ah, the "Fillem van Ome Willem"! Childhood sentiment, indeed! You are wrong in your recollection though. It was not a crocodile sandwhich: ome Willem was affraid there might be a crocodile present in the studio. And in the opening song, the famous "lust je ook een broodje poep?" ("do you fancy a poo sandwhich?") does not get merrit: ome Willem is corrected by the band leader (the late Harry Bannink) who tells him a poo sandwhich is "yucky" (while alll small children present shout "nooooo!!!" as an answer to ome Willem's question).
Sorry, got carried away by memories of yesteryear here... :lol:
So this is not likely to be intentional (not for financial gain at least), unless it was simply to do for getting personal publicity.
On the other hand, she wasn't really hurt, and just being grossed out isn't typically an actionable complaint. The restaurant should have at least replaced her salad for free, though.
I guess if I wanted to be really contrary I'd say she was lucky Burger King didn't ask her to pay extra, since frog meat is much more expensive than the usual BK fare.
That reminds me of the rumor back in the 1980s or so that Burger King or McDonalds or somebody was secretly mixing earthworms (or in some versions, kangaroo meat) into hamburgers to cut costs. The fact that earthworms (and kangaroos) cost much more per pound than hamburger meat didn't seem to slow sown the rumor much.