Diners suffer food poisoning after eating ramen “roach” meal

SINGAPORE: A woman took to an online forum on Thursday (Jan 25) to share that she and her boyfriend tried eating at a ramen food shop after seeing “a ton of recommendations.” Unfortunately, the couple’s gastronomic experience turned into gastroenteritis torture instead.

She wrote in her post, “After our lunch, my boyfriend started feeling feverish that day. He was coughing and gagging a lot. Both of us were getting stomach pains and diarrhoea. We both didn’t know these were already food poisoning symptoms. My stomach pain lasted only for a few days while he’s still currently recovering till now.”

While looking through her phone, she said she spotted something alarming. Attached to the post was an image of a bowl of one of their orders. There was a small dark brown item on one of the pieces of meat.

The second photo was a zoomed-in version of that part of the meat. The brown item appeared to be a small roach.

“It was an honest mistake on our part that we didn’t notice the cockroach as it literally looks like a burnt onion or something,” the woman argued. “But then I zoomed in and here it is.”

After one commenter asked, the woman revealed that the incident had already been reported to the Singapore Food Agency.

However, two other people seemed to doubt the photo, with one saying, “That doesn’t look like a cockroach though. It looks like fibre of the chashu.”

Another wrote, “(You) must pick it up and flip it over to see more details before you can confirm (that it) is an insect.”

This is not the first time that a diner has claimed to have spotted a roach in their food.

In September 2023, a woman was distraught to find an “uninvited guest” as she spotted a cockroach in her duck rice at Bukit Timah Market Food Centre.

Read related: Woman shocked to see “cockroach on duck rice” at Bukit Timah Market Food Centre

Later in the same month, a hungry diner at Pasir Panjang Food Centre was shocked to find a cockroach in his order of rice, vegetables, and beef kicap.

Read related: Hungry diner gets beef kicap rice, veg & cockroach for $8.60