Maybe the staff members just thought he needed the iron?
Shaul Stone visited Chelsea’s Just Salad for lunch yesterday and, feeling adventurous, he ordered a Tandoori Fire Salad instead of his usual Thai Chicken Crunch. When Stone started eating, however, he found that whoever made the salad had supplied him with one extra ingredient, and it wasn’t love; it was a rusty nail. (Technically, love could still be one of the extra ingredients. I am being optimistic here.)
Stone spoke to Gothamist about his experience and told them the following: (emphasis theirs)
I go here about once a week, rotating between Chop’t and Just Salad for my workday lunch salads. I was feeling confident about Just Salad lately after the Chop’t rat story and could not believe what I saw today in my own. I was about halfway done my salad when I noticed the dark object (definitely a nail).
It was the Tandoori Fire salad which was a change for me. I usually get the Thai Chicken Crunch. I was actually quite enjoying the salad when I pulled my fork out and happened (luckily) to look down. I saw it was dark and at first thought it was a twig or a worm, but nope—nail, and a rusty one at that.
Ok, that’s awful. I don’t know what I would do if I found a rusty nail in my food — I sent this story to my partner and he reminded me that the Indian place down the street served me a piece of glass once and I still go there weekly — but what Stone did next was tweet out a picture of his salad. And it doesn’t look great.
Gothamist reports that while Stone didn’t bite into the screw he also didn’t take the salad back to the restaurant (it was a to-go order) when he discovered it because he was too busy. Instead, he tweeted at them and also sent the tweet to Gawker, Gothamist, and Buzzfeed. I understand how horrible it must be to find something gross in your food, but maybe give the company a chance to respond before alerting the national media? While this doesn’t discount Stone’s story completely, it does make me question both its authenticity and his motives (it reminds me a little of the bouncer in Striptease who carefully put a bug in his yogurt.)
Just Salad has responded and says they’re looking into the incident, but Stone says he might not be back unless there’s proper recourse for the restaurant’s actions. The proper recourse according to Stone?
“as far as recourse, I am not yet aware of their policies, however, to know what they are doing to ensure safety and prevent this from happening again and perhaps a donation to an environmentally friendly charity, or one that they otherwise support.”
I don’t know. Can’t he just settle for a free no-nail salad and a Diet Coke?