Waiter! There's A Snake In My Broccoli!

This has to be the cheffing story of the week – and it still makes me recoil in horror when I think about it. It’s not just my mortal phobia of snakes that’s to blame...it’s how the hell a chef could make such a howling schoolboy error when throwing broccoli on a plate!

Alright, I know the cooks are generally rushed off their feet at TGI Friday’s. And I know it’s not exactly Michelin star cooking, or indeed the standard expected by the SSSSSan Pellegrino world restaurant awards.

But come on! How can you confuse a broccoli floret with a severed serpent’s head?

The story started when Jack Pendleton spotted something grey, and well, distinctly reptile-shaped, mixed in with his veg while dining with his girlfriend at a TGI Friday's restaurant in Clifton Park, New York.

"I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch,” he said using that dramatic present tense so loved by football commentators.

“I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top. I stopped eating and I told my girlfriend, 'I think this is a head'."

The reptile’s head – about the size of a thumb - also had bits of spine and tendons still attached as if the horror wasn’t enough already.

A waiter was called over to remove the plate – but not before the 28-year-old art director had snapped a photo with his mobile phone.

"The manager came over white as a sheet," Pendleton told the Times Union. "He explained in five years he'd never run into anything like this."

The chain has since issued a statement, saying it took the incident "very seriously."

"We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation,” added spokeswoman Amy Freshwater.

“As a precautionary measure, we pulled broccoli from all restaurants that received product from this supplier. We have since isolated the specific lot date of the broccoli in question and have now reintroduced the product in all restaurants not included in the product hold.

"In addition, we are sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing. We... regret that this situation occurred in one of our restaurants."

The couple, of course, were not charged for their meals.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the story is not that the American refuses to sue over his gruesome find...it’s that he plumped for a side-order of vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich.

Restaurants And 'Tips As Wages'

Wage slaves in the catering industry had some rare good news today with the Government’s announcement that employers are to be banned from using tips to top up staff pay.

Some unscrupulous restaurant, cafe and pub owners have been using tips and service charges to meet the minimum wage – currently a whopping £5.73 an hour for workers aged 22 and over.

But now that is to change from October – meaning the tips diners leave will go to those who actually served and cooked their meal, rather than lining employers’ pockets.

Gordon Brown confirmed the move at Prime Minister’s Question Time, saying the public consultation had proved positive and the new legislation would help protect low-waged waiting and catering staff.

Unions, which have long campaigned for change, welcomed the move.

Derek Simpson, Unite trade union's general secretary, said the Government was “doing the right thing” by closing a loophole “which has allowed greedy employers to use tips to pay staff the minimum wage”.

But the British Hospitality Association has warned that it may result in the loss of 45,000 industry jobs as hard-pressed employers struggle with the extra financial burden.

And because of tax and National Insurance implications, it argued, staff could in fact be worse off – and the only real winner would be...yes you guessed it, the tax man.

That said though, the BHA did not “oppose the introduction” – it simply questioned its timing, what with the recession and all.

But many see the move as just window-dressing from a Government keen to show it’s doing something to help the working poor (after all, when New Labour introduced the National Minimum Wage in 1999, it specifically allowed tips to top up pay packets).

The legislation also covers people on low salaries – rather than just those paid by the hour - but how much effect it will have in restaurants is open to debate.

In my last full-time cheffing job, I was paid £12,000 a year for a 14-plus hour day, meaning my hourly rate was £3.50 an hour. Tips were divvied up and came to about £100 a month, pushing my wage to about £3.90 an hour – still way below minimum wage.

My income as a commis chef was about average, and my hours in no way excessive. Some staff in Michelin restaurants pocket less money for 18-hour days – putting their wage at about £2.50 an hour.

They can of course report their employer to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, but I don’t know any who have.

And who can blame them? They’re too busy catching night-buses home or sleeping on the dry store floor in those precious hours between shifts. After all, a slave, as Marco Cato liked to say, should be sleeping when he’s not working.

Interestingly, a survey this week by StarChefs.com showed that even though the recession had dented chefs’ salaries on the other side of the pond, most were still well above the average US household income of $50,740 (about £34,000).

Maybe it’s about time we in the UK paid our chefs more? It may even be why it’s one of the few professions that still has a skills shortage...

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