Snake’s Head Found In Broccoli at T.G.I. Friday’s In Clifton Park, New York

CLIFTON PARK, New York -- The sight of a severed snake's head under his broccoli made Jack Pendleton lose interest in dessert. Pendleton said he found the head, the size of the end of his thumb, while eating Sunday at the T.G.I. Friday's in Clifton Park. The chain restaurant said it regrets the appetite-killing error. Pendleton said he has no plans to sue.

Pendleton said he ordered vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich. When he started to eat his broccoli, he saw something gray on the plate he at first thought was a mushroom. "I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch," he said.

Next he saw a V-shape that turned out to be the mouth of a snake. "I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top," he said. The severed head also had bits of tendon and part of the spine attached, he said.

"I stopped eating. I told my girlfriend, 'I think this is a head,'" he said.

Pendleton snapped a photo with his cellphone camera, then summoned the waiter. He covered the dish with his hand and described his find.

"He thought I was joking until I took my hand away," Pendleton said. The waiter grabbed the plate and took it back to the kitchen, the diner said.

"The manager came over white as a sheet," said Pendleton, 28, of Ballston Lake, a senior art director for a textbook company in Clifton Park. "He explained in five years he'd never run into anything like this."

Amy Freshwater, a spokeswoman for the chain, said in an e-mailed statement the company is trying to determine what happened.

"We are taking this situation very seriously," she said. "We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation. 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."

The supplier has been contacted to begin its own investigation, she said. "We are sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing," Freshwater said in the statement. "We have very strict and thorough safety and sanitation procedures and regret that this situation occurred in one of our restaurants."

The couple were given their meals without charge and offered the name of a regional manager, which Pendleton said he declined. He said he advised the manager he should check the kitchen to make sure the rest of the snake wasn't in someone else's meal. He also told the manager the head should have been found when the vegetables were harvested or, if it crawled into a box, before it made it into his meal.

Pendleton said he filed a complaint through the restaurant's Web site but has no plans to sue. He tried to contact the Saratoga County Health Department, he said, but he could not find contact information on its Web site. His story also was posted on the Web site the Consumerist, under the headline "Snakes on a Plate."

He and his girlfriend had planned to attend a carnival after their meals, he said, but as he pulled into the lot he decided he didn't have the stomach to go on the rides.