I felt like breaking my no carbs in the evening diet and decided to pass by with Nat to Johnny Rockets near Sultan Center for dinner. For some reason I felt like sitting at the bar and now I am not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I was watching the cook prepare a bunch of burgers and noticed he put a piece of lettuce that had something dark on it. Since he didn’t react so I figured it was maybe just part of the lettuce texture or something and I ignored it. A few minutes pass and the cook starts placing the beef patties on the buns. He turns away and goes back to the grill and that’s when I notice something moving on the bottom bun of one of the burgers. At first I thought it was just my imagination and maybe it was a piece of the patty that fell off or something but then the cook came back with the top buns and put them on the burgers in front of him and that black thing I saw was now crawling on the top bun! It was a fucking worm! I am sitting there in shock cuz there was a fucking worm crawling on the bun! Then the cook starts wrapping the burger to place on a plate. I tell the waitress who was standing behind the bar that there was a fucking worm on the burger. She’s like what? I am like there is a worm on the burger and I point towards the burger. She looks and spots it and gives out a little shriek. The cook asks her whats wrong and she tells him about the worm. He quickly takes the burger and throws it away. I was like no thanks I’m leaving. I put 500 fils on the bar which was the cost of the bottle of water I had ordered and got up to leave. Two guys were sitting on the bar near by asked me what happened, I told him there was a worm on one of their burgers and I walked out.
This is extremely depressing. I spent the next hour wondering why I decided to break my diet tonight and why I decided to sit at the bar. Why did I have to see this? Why couldn’t I have eaten healthy tonight? Now I am never going back to Johnny Rockets again. In fact I am never going to have any kind of salad or vegetable anywhere outside my house. From now on I am going to order all my burgers without vegetables and I am not going to have any salad with my meals (maybe just at Le Notre since I pick my own salad at the bar). This is depressing! Where will I go from now on for a quick burger???
90 replies on “Totally grossed out”
gross!
post of the year. lol
Mark how sure are you that the meat they use is good enough to eat ??
And lol have any idea how many of such worms have already gone in you ?:P:P
totally GROSS!
But I think you will get over it after few days or weeks…or earlier if shake shack is launched !!
Its the new tequila burger 🙂
@Kulsum, not all of us are comfortable around nasty shit as you are, it’s just the way we were brought up.
Thats really disgusting, the cook saw the worm and he put it in the burger. I’d say nothing more delicious than grilled burgers in shaleh or even at you house.
A worm actually consists of protein, so think of it as an uncooked part of the patty. It’s a way of seeing the glass half full 😉
the cook didn’t see the worm which is what surprised me more!
Welcome to the club, I’ve been a member for a year and half, only home made burgers and salads for us.
one of me friends spotted a roach in KFC’s salad… she thought it was an olive.. yea that big… yummm KFC!
food made anywhere besides home is all disgusting , we all tend to just go into denial mode and munch away! 🙂 and hey .. bugs = protein! 🙂
It happened to me with Subway, I just had my first snap of the sandwich when I saw a worm crawling on the lettuce! I threw up, big time!
wow! good spotting mark.
totally boycotting johnny rockets, in fact EVERY fast food joint.
look at the bright side though, you didnt end up eating carbs tonight!
LOL … I guess karma hit you pretty good for trying to break your no carbs in the evening diet!
Man, restaurant hygeine can be identified by the look and treatment of the staff. Happy staff means good hygene.
It shouldn’t be just homemade burgers and salads, you should try to eat everything home made. It’s hard but you’ll get used to it. I cook my food 12 hours ahead sometimes. Homemade food tastes better and is much cleaner. Eat out occasionally.
its a warm, not something else. warm comes with vegetable, its not that bad. yes i’m grossed with bugs, i cant stand bugs, and in fact i never have vegetable at resturants because of that… but its not like something they can control.. you have to expect it.
if it was a cockroach, that would have been a different story.
3azeez I know worms come with vegetables but the fact that i was sitting 2 meters away from the burger and noticed something strange in the lettuce and then the worm crawling on the outside while the cook standing right on top of the burger didn’t notice is what worries me. Worms come with vegetables but the cook has to check and make sure the vegetables he is putting in the burger are clean, thats like burger flipping 101.
Mark, I took notice lately that a lot of the fast food places have similar worm infestation in which the cook him/herself doesn’t see the worm in the food while they are cooking it. A month a go this happened to a guy in Mc Donald’s Salmiya the one that’s above Johnny Rockets https://q8geeks.org/blog/mc-worm. later on I received similar info on MSN the same incident happening in Hardees and KFC. Now I am wondering if all these fast food joints are receiving their food supply from the same company. If so then there is something wrong with the food source that supply these restaurants.
In any event, people who are reading this post should not boycott a particular restaurant because of this scenario as it can happen anywhere but should take a different approach and stop eating junk food altogether period.
lol @ burger flipping 101…hahah…nice 1 Mark;)
yeh da whole incident ……totally gross!! i reckon if u were in AUS u could sue them n make sum good money off them by now!! As 4me i guess i will jus boycott Jhonny Rockets for the time being!
i need fuddruckers to open in salmiya
F**K !!! Here goes my fav. Hang out and food !!
Dude that happened to me at Johnny last year!! and manager do nothing for me and now i stop eating there!!!
Guess what people, this filth is what happen in 100% of restaurants.
chicken and meat defrost Suddenly on orders, greens don’t get washed and if it did not properly.
Eat at home.
God!!! Such a stomach-turner! >.<!!!!
So, what did ya end up eating at the end? I'm guessing nothing for the night!!!
oh, my God! ewwwwwwssss, gross!!!
Well, u know what at least u saw it before someone got to eat it! & now everyone knows what happened, so thats why you were sent there; so that you tell us!!
omg…. !!!
another one bites the dust.. no more JR 🙁
..am glad u didn’t post pics of the worm 🙂
..didn’t the staff try to apologize or make u stay??
Damn i feel so disgusted 🙁 i used to luv their burgers but not anymore 🙁
thanx for telling us!
Worms are sometimes common in locally grown Iceberg lettuce,maybe all the fast food joints here have the same supplier.
Worms = Protein.
Your such a drama queen!
How bizarre – even after reading your post I still got an urge for a J rockets original with cheese. Same thing happened to me when I watched Supersize Me and craved Mcdonalds…
Mark, you saved a worm from being eaten. Worms have a place in this world and their rightful place is not in someone’s stomach. Save the worms, save the earth.
You are like totally using “I was like” when describing something that, you know, like happened to you.
Maybe the worm was saying good bye to it’s friend the cow?
in any case… i doubt worms or insects would go all kamikaze and jump on the grill… so you can always have a cheeseburger and leave out any kind of vegetables… i think i am going to stop having veggies outside my home too… every one is seeing a worm here and there!!!
Maybe they are using the Kuwaiti grown lettuce they sell in sultan center. I have bought it twice and both times found worms. Got a pic from one of the times if you want it.
OHHHH MYYY GODDD !! R U SERIOUS !! thats just GROSS !! I love jonny rockets burgers but this is sooo not right ! and the fact that you had to see it is just bad ! next time if i decide to go, am gonna try sitting on the bar too !
May be Mark look like Chinese to them… and they tryin hard to impress . . ;D
Damn Mark!! Now after seing the worm you figured out Johny Rocket’s special cooking ingredient!!
It was the secret behind their good burger taste!!
@Duke
dude! You are brought up eating this kind of nasty shit food. I didnt!
I’m not as grossed out as you are because its nothing new. The fact that fast food chains ignore worms, bugs and insects is well known unless you were living on another planet you should have known it.
Mark & Nat together without Cameras ??!! man you should have captured it as video & posted here + calling the consumers protection police .. do not discuss it with the restaurant manager even at all.. next time take this burger even from who have ordered it and do the needful… even this will screw ur night out once..
1- u will be relived
2- other restaurants should take care even for small while..
what about all these restaurants cook inside and not beside the bar 🙁
I am single and i cant cook from 7 years in Kuwait . and i still will eat out and check my food every time 🙁 🙁 🙁
one day i found a dried beetle in herbs by Magdy herbs company.. i bought it from Sultan Center closed & sealed!!!!
Mark, you should have kept perfectly silent, taken a picture of the heat-bodied, growling worm and posted here.
I was by the Rockets yesterday evening, standing there making my decision rockets or mcd?
grrr…friends say mcd….I say okay…
What if it was rockets yest and your blog today AAHH
I’ve seen a staff sneezing while handling food in McDonalds once. Maybe it adds a bit more flavour perhaps ?
Though im totally grossed out, im not surprised. Mark might have seen the worm moving cuz it was alive, what if it were dead or cut into pieces? Think of the percentage of insects or insect parts or worm parts we all eat on an average….try putting a number to that…wouldne be surprised if it were high….hell this was a burger prepared in front of him….in other joints its not prepared front of you….how often do we open up our burgers or disect our pizzas n other food to check for this crap?? u can never be too safe…anyway it all comes out when you take a dump!
So why doesnt anybody call the health dept.. like the ministry whos actually in charge of looking into this or perhaps they need a warning, all of them.. all the joints…
by the way !!
may be it was spacial order or a guy from far east where they adore such worms as best food !! i guess i saw that in my own eyes in Thailand..
mark ..can u tell -or try to – the nationality of the guy who was making the burger.. ?!
!!!
What does a cooks nationality have to do with this?
Eat Manakish!
The restaurant should check all their food and make sure it’s 100% clean. But who knows, maybe they did but this just slipped by. The cook should have seen it.
If this was the states the place would be closed down.
Mark,
u did not read my comment ..
some nationalities do EAT worms ..
i saw that with my own eyes 🙂
it was in jock context as maybe his is from this nationalities who eat it , and he was making spacial order for one of his same country ..
search youtube if u never heard about worms as food in far east !! but be careful of what u might see.. can make u stay longer out of the idea of eating 🙂
If ur in d mood for a li’l suprise wiggling in ur burger, venture out to sum fastfood, probably dats why they tast so good!!! Rememder we hav all dat Hydrochloric acid in our stomach for a reason!
My husband always asks why I open my burger and throw the tomatos out? why dont I just order it without tomatos!! Well this is one of the reasons in additon to the fact that I like the slight after tomato taste, a hint of the juice. But also its a great chance to actually see whats going on inside my burger.
Its always good to see before eating, But if you do find something .. Kiss that joint good bye.
Hey Mark,
me and my friend were the guys sitting next to u, we were the one asked u what happened. When u stepped out, we saw 6 people of the staff gathering around the cooking table and discussing it, i couldnt understand what they were saying since they werent talkign in english, right away we asked the waiter back about it, she replied that it wasnt a worm, but the lettuce used was not well washed, therefore the dark thing thought to be a worm is just sth else..not enough explanation. then we saw a lot of faces staring at the burger and the inside of it before they guy throw it in the garbage.
Course i didnt believe them,neither my friend. but the funny part is that our burgers were almost finished and nothing to do or complain about but to laugh at it!! like how i saw Nat laughing when stepping out following u!
i told nat I shouldn’t have told u since you looked like u had just finished your burger lol
Mark.
On the one hand I’m really sorry you had to see what you saw, and on the other, I’m glad that you did and told us all.
Johnny Rockets is ( WAS ) my fav hangout.
but after today……man this is really sad.
thanks anywayz mate.
This Johnny Rockets location was a closed a few weeks ago (for a couple of days) by the municipality; it might have been for sanitary reasons!
This week’s cheat meal is at Johnny Rockets…but I’m still hitting that place.
I love when Karma starts working for me :P.
Stick to your diet Mark!
And was Nat planning on cheating too?
damn, lol
this will surely drop their nxt month sales..
im sorry Johnny rockets, ive always loved ur chilli fries but shit aint cool nymore, worms? ugh
euw!! im never gonna go there again cuz its not the first time that happens! wish they would be more careful!
I hate Johnny Rockets
if you didn’t take photos for the worm
Johnny Rockets will not do anything
sorry but there is no Evidence ..
If there is Lettuce there will be worms they live on it Naturally!
Junk food restaurants do not have enough time to clean Lettuce good.
seeing worms in lettuce means that the lettuce doesn’t wash well
I’m really afraid of chemicals that were sprayed lettuce This is a real danger not the little worm.
@Sara wooww i thought i was the only one who did that :p
I would imagine the manager telling the cook:
“Out of all the people you just had to pick the one with the famous blog!”
-Gus
so much for their Free-quent promo.
I don’t really fancy Johnny Rockets but this might just have been an isolated incident.Who knows what goes on in the kitchen of other large fast food restaurants that’s not visible to the customers.If it was cockroaches or vermin though it would be a total different matter.
2 points – I buy fresh lettuce in Kuwait frequently, and have found worms often (I don’t know if they use pesticides here or not).
My husband and I were at Applebees a couple years ago, and all of a sudden, my husband asked the server for a new table. They asked why, and he pointed at the table with the nacho basket – there were 3 cockroaches on the table! They moved us, gave us half off our meal price, and we have never been back.
first off, when you pay 2 kd for a burger that costs 1200 in mcdonalds, with a meal, you expect it to taste good, johnny rockets has SHIT burgers,they have NO flavour. the ONLY good thing there are the 0reo shakes. they need to maintain hygeine when it comes to what we eat. the baladiya is gna be on their case BIG time. sorry Johnny, but looks like ur rocket’s gna crash soon.
worms are protein… eat the damn burger and go on with your life
if you think something like a worm is bad, guess again, the beef you were about to eat probably has much worse things that a harmless insect
ask the dietitian if you dont believe me
Hey Mark r u sure it was a worm maybe it was somethin else like a piece of lettuce moving maybe from the wwind or watever
Clearly they have not washed the lettuce which is sick, lucky u did not grab a bite cuz the worm could have eggs around the lettuce, thanks for the blog, that place is history to me 😉
Here’s my theory:
– The cook knew it was you, Mark from 248am
– He saw the worm
– He said Oh, Mark is sitting there, he’ll definitely snap this and put it in his blog, and I’ll be famous!
– He ignored it and waited for the flash
– He waited
– and waited ..
– He then thought you must have used your iPhone, so he just wrapped the burger and gave it to you
– He entered your blog in the evening, didn’t find his picture, opened his email, saw that Jonny Rockets fired him, he got sad, he committed suicide
– Al Watan newspaper reported his suicide in the papers
He’s famous, Jonnys fired him, your eating healthier now, everyone is happy! 😀
Come on Mark. Eating a worm is probably a better source of protein than that beef burger you were thinking of eating :p
Mark, it’s just a hint that tells you to stick to your diet no matter how hungry you are, no cheating! 🙂
Are you absolutely sure it was a worm? Personally, I have never seen black worms in Kuwait? I think it might have been another incest that has a resemblance of a worm. At least it was not a maggot!
Remember Johny Rockets is a fancy expensive Fast Food joint after all..So expect worms, incests and expired bread 🙂
My cousins and I had to leave Almanshar branch once coz there was an asshole who insisted to smoke when the No Smoking signs where everywere. we told the manager if he let this guy order, then were leaving. He ignored us and took his order, so we left before we order anything
LoL Gus nice one haha!
“I would imagine the manager telling the cook:
‘Out of all the people you just had to pick the one with the famous blog!'”
Guys I wish you could stop telling us worms=protein cause we know that but no one can eat them so mark is not a drama queen it’s just the truth about fast food and who knows what alse ,gross
It could happen and probably happens in the cleanest restaurants, very common in the restaurant business, I hope the management of JR reads this article and responds, and i hope Mark you realize what kind of negative impact this does to any reputable business…
Yaz not sure where you eat but finding a worm in a burger is NOT common in the restaurant business. I’ve been eating out for 30 years and I’ve never found a worm in my food. If Johnny Rockets does get any negative impact it won’t be because of my post but because of the fact that one of their customers found a worm in their burger.
Mark couldn’t agree more and yaz that’s not common
Excise me!!!
MARK & NAT .. two active bloggers without any device of recording that ??
Excuse me !!
u make pics of any accident u see in the streets and u keep telling us about your new cameras that u hold forever !! and your mobile devices that has cameras ??
Excise me !!
i do not buy what u said Mark.. especially the way u told the story .. it was so so natural u start video this !! Come on.. blogging is making business & profit for you ??!!
Excise me !! big black thing moving twice ?? and u cat grab ur recording device ?? even if u r not a person have successful blog u make money from it ?!
Excuse me !!! it was so smart that some other comment said that they ware the four persons setting beside u! after my 1st comment about where r ur cameras Mark & Nat .. loool funny !!
Imam: Sorry but I think that’s a stupid idea. If you’re that kind of person that’s you but I am not the type of person that would exploit a company for money. I would highly recommend that you don’t ever try to blackmail a restaurant for money since you could get in a lot of trouble.
the Main Purpose is Save Save Save nad sit and eat at home lool just kidding..
Imam: You my friend are a tool, because:
1) you proposed blackmail.
2) spell check, use it.
3) for thinking Mark planned the reply from the people sitting right next to him.
There’s a Fat Burger opening up soon in Mahboula! I personally can’t wait.
I’ve been a regular customer at Johnny rockets since they first opened in 1995. I frequent nearly all their branches often and I’ve posted about them a number of times in the blog and even as part of the burger challenge. Because I am on a diet I like the fact that I can have my burger in brown toast if I want and Nat recently fell in love with their streamline burger which was very cool because it meant I could have a burger with her more often.
In addition to the above I have a very strict policy on my blog not to post anything about anyone unless it happened to me or to someone I know and turst. I get a ton of emails all the time from people complaining about places and even pictures but I don’t post them because I don’t know if the pictures are right or if it’s someone just pissed off at a brand and is trying to get revenge. I have a responsibility as a popular blog to post only facts.
The reason i posted about this here is because this was an actual incident that happened to me and so i know it’s real. This incident was very shocking and as a person who eats out daily I can tell you I am not as comfortable anymore doing that. I didn’t have my camera and at that moment taking a picture was the last thing on my mind. Some people in that situation might have seen an opportunity to extract money from the restaurant but for me all i was thinking about in that moment was how gross it was seeing that fucking worm.
I have no financial gain with this post, I don’t see how you would think that. If I wanted financial gain i would have contacted Johnny rockets and asked for money to stay quiet but I didn’t. If anything I’m actually helping them. I am sure they might not been aware of the lapse of quality control and I am sure this incident will improve things for everyone. When I spotted the cockroach at Pizza Hut ages ago that branch went and got a complete remodeling and got some major improvements.
In any case Johnny Rockets have already contacted and told me they will see how this happened. Once I get a response back I will post it here if they allow me to.
omg i should not have read this 🙁
thank u very much mark! >.>
OMG!! This is the worst thing I’ve ever read. I can completely understand how grossed out you were. And I can’t believe you have to justify yourself, your experience and your reaction. I take my hat off to you for not exploiting JR. In the end, we’d rather they fix the problem than “wiggle their way out of it” so to speak. 😀
You reminded me of when we first moved to Kuwait 5 years ago and I found a piece of a latex glove in my pizza. I was off pizza (no matter where it was made even if at home) for 3 years!
Hey Mark.. thats pretty gross.. worm in your burger.. but guess what.. i dont think restaurants here have any “customer empathy” policy here. I was at Leila in the avenues with my wife for lunch. We placed our order and the waiter left the basket of bread on our table. My wife found a hair in it and brought it to the waiter’s notice. All she could do was to go and giggle with her colleagues about the fact. I was pretty annoyed at this and only after raising hell, the manager came and apologised… which btw wasnt genuine but just for courtesy. I’m never going back there… Mais Alghanim always rules!
dude.. maybe it was just karma.. breaking you diet was a bad idea.. 😛
You should feel flattered :-)…. Today’s ‘Arab Times’ has reproduced this piece in its ‘grapewine’ section. The report of course is in the third person and no credit is given to the original source.
well i hate salad,, but a month ago when i was on diet i subscribed with lofat, and not once or twice naa more that 4 times there was worms in the saladddd,,i swear ,,all my life i hated salad and now i would never ever eat any kind of vegetables unless i wash it and prepare it my self,,i dont eat out anymore thats disgusting
I eat out regularly but never had such experiences before… probably I never checked the quality of the stuff I ate… but thanks to you Mark, I realise these things happen in Kuwait and I will be cautious… I doubt I will stop going to Johnny Rockets; probably they learnt their leasson and will be careful in the future about the quality of the food they serve… but wats important is that each one of us should be careful about wat we eat…