A live worm eating its way through the bottom half of a Payday candy bar which I had already partially eaten (the candy bar, not the worm), but since it had been purchased at a grocery store and wasn’t the store’s fault, I just threw the rest of the bar away.
I saw a cockroach crawling on the wall at a Mexican restaurant that I enjoyed going to, and discretely pointed it out to the waitress. They moved me and comped the meal. I was satisfied.
When I lived in Malaysia for two years, there were two incidents, both in the first year:
One day when I was new in the country, I was a few miles outside of Kuala Lumpur, out walking at lunchtime, in search of cheap eats. I came upon a mosque that was having its weekly afternoon community kitchen downstairs. All you can eat rice, for a bargain price. It came with Malaysian “curry,” which consisted of diced pineapple with chopped vegetables and soy sauce, and maybe a hint of turmeric to be able to call it curry. And as it turned out during the course of eating, an uninvited guest: a small, vegetable-dwelling grub. I stopped eating at that point, got up, and left.
Visiting the fabled isle of Langkawi, I was staying at a downmarket guesthouse, which cooked meals and served them on the patio. I got a salad. Turning up a lettuce leaf, I found a grub the size of my pinky finger. This time I complained to the management. I couldn’t get a refund because the meals were included in the guesthouse rental and not priced separately. All they could offer was more food at no charge, which it would have been anyway. Of course, that didn’t help any.
Reading about grubs, I can only think of Bear Grylls, Man vs. Wild, eating big old grubs and other bugs. 
Rice Chex has little black specks in it which can only be noticed because it’s supposed to be a uniformly beige-white cereal. I assume other cereals have the same thing, but you just can’t see it.
I made spaghetti from a package the other day, and thought I saw some black particles in it while I was pouring it in the water. It was later confirmed when I drained it off and there was a mass of black particles laying in the bowl that I drained it into, so I threw it away even though I was hungry.
Similar to the premise…often when I microwave chicken nuggets or other microwaveable chicken meals, sparks will come off the food indicating little metal somethings in the food.
One Georgia Pizza Hut tried to pass off Hot Dogs, sliced thin, as Italian Sausage.
This was in the 80s.
My Mom bit into a piece of wood that was inside a Mounds bar. She put the wood in an envelope with a letter to the company.
They sent her a short apology and about 10-15 coupons for free Mounds bars(or any other Hershey products). We were satisfied…she had no dental problems or anything.
Why my wife attracts these incidents I don’t know, but:
• At one place they served her a cheeseburger but forgot to take the cheese out of its individual plastic wrapper
• At another, they served her vegetable side (green beans) in the plastic bag they had obviously been microwaved in.
So much for good old home cookin’ at your average restaurant these days.
Got a (tiny, very cute) snail in my salad a while ago. I finished the salad, which was quite tasty, but returned the snail to the waiter when he came by to collect the plates. The restaurant may have comped the salad. I don’t remember.
Got a metal shaving in a bowl of pasta and sauce many years ago. There was a vibe about the place that made me think the management wouldn’t care if I brought it to anyone’s attention, so I didn’t.
I found a chunk of what appeared to be particle board in a box of Cheerios. I sent it back to the company and got back a pile of coupons and a letter explaining that it was a hunk of oat fiber that had probably formed in the packing machinery, reached critical mass, and broken off without being noticed. I probably could have consumed it safely, sort of like an oat Weetabix.
When I was a kid, our family brought some food home from Wendy’s. When we opened the container of chili, we saw about a handful of greenish staples on the surface of the chili. There were so many, with no attempt at concealment, that someone must have done it on purpose, but my grandma didn’t want to go back or even call to complain. I don’t recall any unpleasant incident with the cashier there, so I assume we must have gotten a “special” chili meant for someone else.
I went to a Subway near the office for lunch. Noticed something black flecking from the ice machine. Wiped it out. Next time, again. Asked about it, they seemed like it was paint from the machine or something, wipe it out be fine.
Next time, I got a peak in the ice machine - brown gunk all over the inside, which I politely pointed out to the employee. Oh, okay. I didn’t get ice that time and mentioned it to the next customers before I left.
Next time I went back, I checked, brown gunk still there, mentioned it with the same employee who saw it last time acting like it was a total new revelation. I stopped going there, and filed a report with the Houston city inspectors.
After about 5 years, I checked their record and that was the last demerit noticed. I went back, totally different staff working there. I started going there again.
I was in a chain restaurant once having a family dinner when I sipped my drink through the straw and felt something odd in my mouth. It was a shard of glass, presumably from another glass perhaps broken in the dishwasher. I told the waitress about it, pretty much just as an “Hey, you might wanna know…” and that soon led to the manager coming out, apologizing and ultimately comping our entire meal. He did ask me to sign a little form saying what happened. It didn’t seem to be an “absolved of all guilt” form, more of a “Don’t come back next week and make the same claim 'cause we’ll know” form.
In any event, I never asked for any compensation – no harm, no foul – and only wanted to let them know so they could check their other glasses or whatever. The free meal was just a bonus.
Some of these other stories just reminded me of the time I found a piece of sugar-encrusted grape vine, maybe under an inch in length, in my cereal. I just took it as a good sign that my cereal’s raisins weren’t created in some weird industrial raisin factory somewhere and actually were grapes at one point.
Poop from one of our pet birds at the bottom of a mug I’d been drinking from. We let them fly loose before we adopted kittens and one of them must have let go over my mug. Since it was just a tiny drop in a big mug, I figured what the hell.
Tiny beetle-like insects in two different containers of curry powder. I’ve only encountered this phenomenon in my parents’ place outside New Orleans. Both containers looked fine when opened but after a month or so these tiny things could be seen moving around in the powder even though the tins were kept closed. Tossed the first and same thing happened with the second.
When I was kid, hot cereal was one of the few hot things I would prepare myself. One Saturday I made myself a nice hot bowl of Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal. A few spoonfuls in and it tasted weird. I looked down and floating like berries were dozens of meal worms. I realized then the cereal was like a year out of date. I hate bugs and worms. I hated them worse back then. I was completely disgusted and threw the entire bowl and spoon and everything into the garbage. To this day I have never eaten Oatmeal again. I am gagging a little writing the story.
I’m reminded of when I first started losing my baby teeth. Dad took me to Burger King and, this being well before they started offering Kids’ Meals, I got my usual: chocolate shake, fries, and cheeseburger, hold the onion. After a few bites, my teeth hit something hard; thought it was an onion.
Nope. Baby tooth.
Found a piece of buckshot in a piece of the beef in my stroganoff at the university dining hall. I wasn’t grossed out or all that alarmed. Just really curious about how it got there. Did somebody shoot a cow with a shotgun somewhere and that bit of shot went through the whole butchering, packing, processing, and cooking chain?
I found a zombie in a weird food thread.
I accidentally ate some of my own pubic hair once. That was not a good day.
Details?