THIS IS NOT THE PREZZO PLC WEBSITE
A night to remember - for all the wrong reasons
by Heather Beer
Prezzo Italian Restaurant, Redhill, Surrey, Tuesday 16th May 2006
A nice, relaxing evening out with the girls. Good company and good food - or so I hoped. We decided on Prezzo in Redhill as it has been pretty good in the past, but I came home swearing I'd never go there again.
During the main course my friends were concerned to find me suddenly and violently spitting my side-salad back onto my plate. There, nestling amongst my lettuce leaves was a small, brown, slimy slug waving its optical tentacles at me. I was horrified. I am not a fan of slugs and the last place I wanted to find one was in my dinner. The thought of having eaten through it's slime trail or some slug eggs was awful and what if I'd put it in my mouth !?!
Having never been in this situation before we called the waitress over for help. We kicked ourselves later for not having the foresight to snap a few photos with a camera phone and call the manager over immediately. The waitress showed little concern and disappeared off to the kitchen, coming back a few minutes later with a new salad, or it could have been the same one for all we knew. By this stage we had all lost enthusiasm for our meals and for the lack of understanding from the waiting staff. "Would you like some chips instead" she said.
We insisted on speaking with the manageress but she had trouble understanding the problem. The evidence had been disposed of and her command of the English language didn't stretch as far as the word "slug". We resorted to drawing pictures to tryand get the message across. All she did was not charge us for my main course which was little consolation for my friend who had ordered a salad as her main dish or the others who had lost their appetites.
Suffice to say we left as soon as possible and will not be going back. We don't know where the salad came from or how a live slug managed to get all the way to a customers plate without detection. We were not reassured that this was a one-off occurrence and we felt the entire incident was not taken seriously enough. It left us wondering what else goes on in their kitchen.