Auckland woman 'disgusted' to find maggots in restaurant meal

Maggots crawling out of a serving of barbecue chicken dished up at a restaurant has left an Auckland woman "disgusted".

A woman posted a video on Facebook which showed maggots crawling all over a chicken and rice meal she bought from BBQ Duck Palace in Botany.

On Facebook she said: "Absolutely disgusted at this! Warning for everyone not to eat here! Please share!"

The woman told the New Zealand Herald she was shocked when the food was brought to them covered in maggots.

She said she took the video and then took the plate of food back to the counter to show the staff, who all looked shocked.

"Nobody should ever, ever have that happen. There's no words that can describe it."

The woman said she felt sick at the sight of it and just wanted to get out of the restaurant. She told some of the other customers what had happened and they left too.

But owner of BBQ Duck Palace Michelle Cao said staff told her the problem with the food was not brought to their attention and instead the customers just left the restaurant.

They only became aware of the maggots when they saw the video on Facebook, she said.

"I'm very surprised," she said. "We roast the chicken first then the chicken will cool down. Before we serve it we put the chicken in the deep fryer then we cut it."

Cao said she did not know how the maggots got there because she believed the meat would still have been very hot when it was cut and served.

No other problems with meals had been brought to their attention and the bugs were only on the one piece of meat, she said.

The restaurant was investigating how the maggots had come to be on the food.

Since the video was posted yesterday, it had been seen 70,000 times and shared more than 1300 times.

It had gained almost 1000 comments from people sharing their disgust at the contents of the video.