Couple's romantic dinner date turns into maggot-fest

Stella Kim, the shocked Sydney woman who found live worms in her steak at a restaurant in Ryde, with her partner Sushil Lamichhane. Photo / Facebook

"Would you like flies with that?" could well be the question from the staff at a Sydney pub which has admitted it presented a customer with a steak served with a side of blowfly larvae.

Stella Kim said she still feels ill recalling the incident; an anniversary dinner which turned into a maggot-infested meal.

The Ranch Hotel, on Sydney's north shore, is now in panic control.

While the pub insists it takes food safety "very seriously" it has admitted that the crawling larvae found its way into the meal.

Ms Kim visited the hotel, located in North Ryde, last week with her partner Sushil Lamichhane to celebrate being together for 1000 days.

Both ordered steaks but when they arrived, the unwanted garnish was immediately apparent on one of the dishes.

"(I) just couldn't believe if this was real. It was horrible, unbelievable," Ms Kim told news.com.au.

"Maggots were crawling over and there was a lot of them. It was like a rotten carcass."
Video posted to Facebook showed the small white creatures slithering across the glistening meat.

"For a few days we just lost our appetite. It is very hard for me to even [talk about it] now."

The Ranch Hotel is owned by Australian Leisure and Hospitality (ALH) Group, a joint venture between the Mathieson Family and retailer Woolworths.

On the pub's website, the management said they served 262 steaks that day but just one was returned due to its unwanted ingredient.

A shocked Sydney woman found live worms in her steak at a restaurant in Ryde. Photo / Facebook

"Our investigation concluded that the incident was due to blowfly larva laid after the meal was cooked, as it is not possible for lava to survive the cooking process.

"All our kitchen staff are experienced and accredited in food safety and The Ranch stands by its food safety record and processes."

The statement said the pub had reported itself to the local council and had apologised to Ms Kim.

However, she is less than convinced by the explanation given.

"The Ranch has been saying this happened instantaneously and worms bursted out somewhat like the Big Bang that created our universe," she wrote on Facebook.

"If someone is [an] expert in biology and thermodynamics, please review the video so that they are educated on food handling."

Photo / Facebook

Several of the pub's customers have also cast doubt on the pub's response that the larvae were laid between when the steak was cooked and served.

Asked if she would ever return to the Ranch hotel, Ms Kim has one answer: "Never".

In July, a family from Croydon, in Melbourne, said they found maggots in an Aldi-bought steak that only emerged after cooking.

"Our 18-year-old looked at it and said, 'There's something wriggling on my food'," mum Jayne said.

"Sure enough, we looked and they seemed to be crawling out of the cracks (in the meat)."

The family said the meat had weeks left before its use by date and had only been stored in the fridge before barbecuing.

Skye Blackburn, an independent entomologist and food scientist engaged by Aldi, examined the video of the contaminated meat supplied by the family.

"It is most likely that the eggs had been laid after this meat had been cooked, and the heat of the meat has accelerated the hatching of the eggs," Ms Blackburn told the Herald Sun.

"Heat allows eggs the potential to hatch within minutes of being laid. Due to higher than average temperatures we're experiencing at the moment, it is common for the life cycle of insects to occur more quickly."