AN Albury takeaway is investigating after a customer nearly swallowed a piece of plastic found in pasta she ordered.
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Lidia Kelly bought the pasta from Rebels Pizza and after sitting down to eat it at her Lavington home struck trouble.
"I took a few bites and after the third or fourth bite I felt something sharp in my mouth and I spat it out on to my plate and I said to my husband 'oh my God, look what I've found'," Mrs Kelly said.
She was left with a reddened roof to her mouth, but no blood was drawn.
"I felt like it ruined our night and this should not happen, but the worst thing of all is that if I had swallowed it,” Mrs Kelly said.
"I thought it was glass when I saw it on the plate and then my husband looked at and said 'that's plastic'."
Rebels Pizza owner-manager John Elhage spoke to Mrs Kelly, refunded the $50 covering her pasta-pizza deal and launched an investigation.
"In 12 years it's never happened to us before, that's why as soon as she spoke to me I was dumbfounded," Mr Elhage said.
He said it appeared the plastic may have come through a sleeve which housed containers used for pasta and was a packaging plastic.
"We've spoken to the supplier and we're awaiting a reply,” Mr Elhage said.
“It's not something we take lightly, we've refunded her the whole meal and we're still trying to look into it."
Mrs Kelly said she emptied the pasta from the plastic container in which it was delivered and reheated it.
She said she checked the container to see if the plastic had broken away from it, but it remained intact.
"I want to stop it from happening to someone else," Mrs Kelly said of her Friday night experience.
"I hope this doesn't stop people order from Rebels, but people have to know if they order this pasta what they could find in there."
Mr Elhage said the pasta was cooked on site and then placed in a container for delivery.
He said there were plans to change the type of plastic used, to a thicker bowl variety used by noodle takeaways, which would reduce the possibility of breakages.
"We've put in a process where we're trying to make sure this doesn't happen," Mr Elhage said.
He stressed that over the 12 years he has operated the Young Street business, thousands of meals have been consumed without incident and hundreds of dishes were prepared each week.
"We've never had a customer complain about finding stuff in their food before,” Mr Elhage said.