Waiter, there’s a hair in my meal: restaurant fights to clear its name

A customer has been caught out trying to get a free meal.

Brisbane restaurant Casa Nostre took security footage of the woman putting her own hair in the meal before refusing to pay the bill.

The restaurant now fighting to clear its name put the footage on Instagram and sent it to food rating website Trip Advisor.

The footage is nothing short of graphic. It shows the woman plucking the strands from her scalp and sticking it in her dish. She had eaten almost the entire meal.

The footage shows her adding salt, waiting a short time and then calling over the waiter.

Casa Nostre owner Biagio Biuso said the woman and her companion threatened staff when the bill arrived.

"She was in a panic, 'take it away, I don't want to see'," Mr Biuso told 9NEWS.

"They blackmail to say 'if you don't do it free, we will write down a review'."

Sure enough, two reviews appeared on Trip Advisor accusing the restaurant of bad service just two hours later.

As a result, the restaurant sent the security footage to Trip Advisor.

It’s also made the point of saying that the hair in question had to come from the woman.

The woman’s hair is long, blonde and curly.

Very different from all of the restaurant's chefs and the waiter who served the woman. They  have short dark hair.

"It's disappointing to think what extremes people will go to to get a free meal," Casa Nostre owner Sara Biuso. told 9NEWS.

The restaurateurs also made their position very clear on Instagram.

"We work hard every single day to give our customers an amazing experience in our restaurant and then you find people like this who decide to try and blackmail us for a hair in their meal," they wrote..

"As you can see, she put her own hair in the plate, stirred it around and insisted the waiter remove it from her as she was so offended.

"Because we did not remove the dish from the bill, they told us explicitly that they would post bad reviews on Trip Advisor, which they did.

"Trip Advisor has a no blackmail policy for reviews and if you inform them in advance, they say they will not post them."

The restaurant is now seeking legal advice about the review.

by Leon Gettler, March 3^rd 2017