- EXCLUSIVE: Gayle Lambert, 51, from Darlington has been left ‘haunted’
- She can no longer stomach her ‘favourite meal’ and would never go back
- Have YOU had a nasty experience at your favourite restaurant? Email: [email protected]
A mother has vowed never to eat a roast dinner again after she was ‘horrified’ by a disgusting Toby Carvery lunch.
Gayle Lambert, 51, has been left ‘completely put off’ her favourite meal after allegedly finding a snail next to her chicken at the restaurant in Darlington.
The mother, enjoying lunch with her daughter, had nearly finished her £10.49 mixed-meats roast when she noticed something unusual left on her plate.
‘We were eating away and I picked up a forkful of mashed potato and stuffing, but as I lifted it towards my mouth I noticed this black thing,’ Gayle recalled.
‘I put the fork down, looked at it and it was a snail. I dropped my knife and fork and looked at my daughter saying, ‘There’s a snail in my dinner.’
Gayle continued: ‘She was laughing but then had a look and was like ‘Oh my God, it is a snail’.
‘I put it on the side of the plate and called a member of staff over. She was horrified and said she didn’t know how it happened because everything comes in pre-packed. She said she’d never seen anything like it.
‘I have never been so physically horrified and disturbed in my life.’
Gayle claims the staff member offered her the chance to get a fresh plate, but she couldn’t stomach the thought and felt she was ‘going to be sick’.
Although she didn’t ingest any of the snail, she noted that some of the shell was missing, so guesses she may have swallowed some without realising.
She continued: ‘The staff member said obviously, ‘we’re not going to charge you, would you like a free drink?’ I said no, I just want to go home, I’m going to be sick.
‘I was asked to fill a form in, they took my details and said hopefully somebody will get back to you, but we’ve reported it.
‘I went home and threw up – I’ve never been so sick. I’ve never ever come out of a restaurant and gone home and thrown up like that.’
Now, more than two months later, the Darlington mother is still struggling to put the incident behind her.
She admitted: ‘It still disturbs me now. I still can’t get my head around it. It really distrurbed me. We used to go out quite a lot for Sunday dinners and I just can’t face it anymore. It’s properly put me off.
‘I mean you know, to have a snail in your food is just horrific. I would never ever go back there again.
‘I think it’s absolutely disgusting. Something like that should have been highlighted. It’s not like it was a hair in your food, sometimes there’s no control over that.’
Angry, she added: ‘But a snail in your food, you would have expected an email to go to head office and there to be an apology.
‘Vouchers are no good because I’d never go back, but I expected some form of recognition, even just to explain it.
‘The worst thing is that in the picture you can see that bits of the shell are missing so I just keep thinking was it in the stuffing and I’ve already eaten it? It makes me sick to this day.
‘For Mother’s Day we were going out for dinner and I said to my mum I can’t do it. My favourite meal, a Sunday dinner, I’ve been completely put right off. It’s absolutely haunted me.’
Gayle claims she got in touch with the chain multiple times through their website, Trustpilot, and via direct message – but is yet to get a response, despite being told on the day it happened that someone would contact her.
She said: I’ve sent them feedback, I’ve sent them a direct message, and not one person has got in touch to say they’re sorry or that they’re horrified with it.
‘I went directly onto their website and wrote to them to say it’s absolutely disgusting, I’m horrified. I’ve done it a couple of times but nothing – no acknowledgement or anything whatsoever about it.’
Gayle added that another thing that ‘disgusted’ her was ‘the fact that the food was still available there’.
‘Nobody went and moved the mash or the stuffing. For me, they should have gone, ‘Well we don’t know what it is, so we’re going to take everything away, but they didn’t and people had been served after us,’ she explained.
The mother vows to never return to Toby Carvery again, despite her family being previous loyal customers who visited at least once a month, sometimes twice ‘when there were deals on’.
But, it isn’t the first time something like this has happened to Gayle and her family at this particular restaurant
In February 2023, the mother claims her husband found a ‘pubic hair on his roast potatoes’ which put them off for a while – the visit this year was the first time they had returned since this.
Gayle said: ‘Literally a year ago we came and there was a pubic hair on my husband’s roast potatoes, this is the first time we’ve come back.
‘My husband already said he’d never go back after the pubic hair incident but we sort of made a joke of that at the time.’
Now, even after being able to put the previous incident behind them, nothing could convince her to return after the ‘haunting’ snail experience – she ‘feels ill’ even recalling what happened.
The horrifying ordeal comes just after another man slammed a ‘disgusting’ meal from the same Toby Carvery restaurant in Darlington and claimed it was so bad he would not feed it to his dog.
Stephen Thompson requested two Thursday Starter Surprise bags via Too Good To Go, which sells on branches’ surplus and unsold food.
However, Mr Thompson was less than impressed with his order once it arrived, claiming that even his dog would not touch it.
Posting to Facebook, he wrote: ‘Toby Carvery’s new starter meal absolutely disgusting not worth the trip,’ accompanied by an image of four brown logs in a cardboard delivery container.
Stephen said that he initially thought the substance was meant to be pate, but was put off by its horrifying appearance.
Toby Carvery declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.
Laura Adams is a tech enthusiast residing in the UK. Her articles cover the latest technological innovations, from AI to consumer gadgets, providing readers with a glimpse into the future of technology.
