Swedish Diners Find Actual Fly in their Soup!

Everybody knows the "waiter, there's a fly in my soup" jokes. But it was no joke for Andrea Svensson when she tried to tuck into her French onion soup at a prestigious restaurant in Gothenburg, Sweden. Svensson was on a date with her long term boyfriend and fiancé who had splashed out on a romantic evening - but the night took a wrong turn when her starter was served with the floating insect. "I feel sick just talking about it," said Miss Svensson, 27 years old. "I would have swallowed the filthy insect if my boyfriend hadn't seen it." Angry, the pair straight away called over the waiter with their complaint. To make matters worse, the waiter who came to see them actually took it as a joke and walked away, grinning knowingly! "You might think it's hilarious, but at the time we weren't laughing." said David Tomas, Andrea's boyfriend. “It was a real breach of good hygiene and put both of us off our meal. To be honest I just got more annoyed when he laughed it off as a joke." In the end they had to get hold of the manager of the restaurant, who, upon seeing the insect apologised and offered the couple dinner at no charge. However the young lovers by this point were far too put off their meal and decided to take their business elsewhere.

Joking aside, any restaurant knows how big a health and safety nightmare this situation could be. The hot summer weather naturally attracts insects, especially in a food preparation area, and installing a low cost fly killer is an absolute must in any commercial kitchen. This particular restaurant however, not being used to hot days in the Swedish climate, didn’t have one. "It's a warning to us that we need to do something about it," said the head chef later. "This has never happened here before and we need to make sure it never does.". “We do take hygiene very seriously in our kitchens, and actually have an air purifier already to trap airborne viruses, as well as air conditioners throughout the restaurant.” Let’s hope other restaurants learn the lesson from this. Reputations have been shredded in the past on incidents such as these. Even worse than the damage to reputation is the prospect of a visit from the dreaded health inspector, which can in extreme cases get the business temporarily closed down.