A woman says she found the head of what appeared to be a small reptile in her salad when she ordered lunch from a restaurant food chain in Manhattan Tuesday.
Robin Sandusky, a theatrical coordinator, said she ordered a kale salad from a Guy & Gallard store in Chelsea for delivery to her workplace. She began eating the salad when she spotted what she thought was a pea.
"I turned it over, and I could see its eye," she told NBC 4 New York.
Sandusky called the store and asked for a refund. She said she declined the store's offer for a replacement salad.
The delivery worker retrieved the salad and refunded the money back to Sandusky, the store manager at the Seventh Avenue location confirmed.
The manager, who only gave his last name as Alan, said he apologized but couldn't confirm that a dead animal part was in the food.
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"She told me, but I didn't check it," said Alan. "When the salad came back, I wasn't here."
He said he told Sandusky, "I'm really so sorry. If you need something -- she said, 'No, we are fine, just a refund.'"
Jason Jeffries, a managing partner at Guy and Gallard, said it's the company's policy to issue a refund when a customer requests one.
"We didn't see any proof of that," he said of Sandusky's allegation of the reptile found in the salad, but added that if a customer has any complaint, "we'll happily issue a refund."
"We have an upstanding reputation in the neighborhood, and all of our stores have excellent health grades," he said.
The restaurant got an "A" during its most recent health inspection last year.
Jeffries said the company will investigate Sandusky's allegation.
Last December, a customer found a dead frog in her salad from another sandwich chain in midtown.