We know what you're thinking: Who orders broccoli at Friday's? Gross! But while dining with his girlfriend at a T.G.I. Friday's near Schenectady on Sunday night, art director Jack Pendleton thought he'd make the healthy choice by substituting a side of vegetables for the fries that usually come with the Jack Daniels Chicken Sandwich. Well, Shesha the thousand-headed snake god works in mysterious ways! In an email obtained by Consumerist, Pendleton writes:
I wasn't too alarmed when I came across a gray mass under the broccoli. Many restaurants include mushrooms in their veggie selection. It was when I noticed the green spots, and then the mouth that I became alarmed. It was a decomposed reptile head. [Pictured] Roughly the size of my thumb from center knuckle to nail.
The eye sockets were rotted and black, bits of spine and tendons were hanging out of the neck, and the skull plate was showing through the missing skin on the forehead. I took a couple of pics with my cell camera, but they don't do it justice.
When I told the waiter he thought I was joking until I pulled my hand from over the top of the thing. At which point he started to gag.... I worked in a restaurant, but the most I ever had to see behind the scenes was hair or maybe an insect in the salad bar stuff. This was a whole other level.
The big news here is that Pendleton has no plans to sue! Snake heads are wasted on the wrong people. Though maybe there's a chance you could hit the jackpot at a Friday's here in NYC, because the chain has reintroduced broccoli to its menu after pulling it from all restaurants that got it from the guilty supplier. But they still don't know how or even when the snake slithered in, nor is it clear where the rest of it went, so they're "sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing."
Perhaps the worst part of the whole story is this sad little detail which wraps up the Times Union's account of Pendleton's evening: "He and his girlfriend had planned to attend a carnival after their meals, but as he pulled into the lot he decided he didn't have the stomach to go on the rides."
