Do Not Eat at New York Pizza in Homewood

I had to run into the lab today for a minute, so Bill and I decided to meet a friend of his for lunch. His friend chose New York Pizza in Homewood. We had never been and thought it sounded really good. Well, it was not a good experience. First, the service was terrible. We had to wait more than 15 minutes before a waitress even came to take our drink order. While we waited I went to the restroom, which looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. There were two stalls, neither of which had working locks so you had to hold the door shut to use the bathroom. The service and bathrooms were something I could very easily overlook if the rest of the dining experience was decent, but it wasn't even close.

I ordered a small veggie pizza. When it came out (about 30 minutes after we had ordered and the place wasn't busy), it looked delicious, and it was for the first two slices. Halfway into the third slice, to my disgust, what falls out of the pizza but a bug. Not just any bug...a late-stage fly larvae. I have done enough fly genetics experiments to know what a fly larvae looks like and this was definitely it! I thought I was going to be sick. In fact, I had to excuse myself and go to the restroom (disgusting as the restroom was it was still better than staring at a bug on my plate). Of course it took another 10 minutes to finally get the waitress back to show her my find. She took the plate (after asking if I was finished - DUH) and avoided our table for another 30 minutes. When she finally came back she only charged us $10 for the three meals we had ordered, which was a good gesture on her part, but I will still never step foot in that restaurant again.

You may think I am over-reacting, but really I am not. I worked in food service for 4 years. I know that occasionally things happen. As much as I hate roaches I really think I would've been better finding a roach or an adult fly in my food. However, I know that where there is one fly larvae there are literally hundreds more. I also know that people in other countries eat bugs, but, guess what....I live in America...where we do not like to knowingly consume insects! Anyway, I thought I would just give everyone a heads up.