A woman suing a Quebec restaurant after allegedly discovering a dead rat in her salad says she has trouble eating out at restaurants these days.
“You stay in a state of shock,” Pierrette Caouette said. “You keep asking yourself, ‘Is it possible that is what I ate?'”
Caouette said she found a rat at the bottom of a salad that she had ordered at a Normandin restaurant in Quebec City last year.
She said she realized something was wrong after taking a second bite.
“It was only once I started chewing that I realized it was abnormal, ” Caouette said. “It felt like rough pebbles in my mouth.”
She said she then dug deep into her salad and pulled out a black carcass and immediately alerted the staff.
Caouette said the staff quickly took the carcass away.
She claims to have repeatedly asked to go into the kitchen to see what she had eaten but she kept getting blocked. It was at that point she decided to call the police.
When the police arrived, Caouette said they took her straight to the hospital.
“There were secretions and bones in what I ate,” she said. “I had to get checked out immediately.”
A year later, she says she is still traumatized and is now seeking close to $200,000 in damages.
Jamie Benizri of Legal Logik is one of the lawyers representing Caouette.
He described the lawsuit as an “attempt to salvage not only her dignity, but to recuperate some of the stress that she has lived.”
Normandin restaurants has not yet filed a defence to the lawsuit and did not respond to Global News’ request for comment.
As for Caouette, she says she is working hard to put that stress behind her.
“I have trouble eating at any kind of event. If I eat something crunchy, it is very difficult,” she said.
Caouette says she is trying her best to take things one day at at time.