Woman Claims She Was Served Deep-Fried Towel Instead of Chicken

A woman has claimed she found a deep-fried towel in a fast-food meal delivered to her home in the Philippines.

Alique Perez said she had ordered the meal from a Jollibee chain restaurant in the city of Taguig, via food delivery service Grab.

Perez described how she found it difficult to slice into what she believed was the chicken she had ordered for her son. After tearing open the deep-fried morsel with her hands, she was horrified to see that it was actually a blue towel.

"This is really disturbing … How the hell do you get the towel in the batter and even fry it," Perez wrote on Facebook alongside images and a video.

"I really thought that the posts complaining about weird stuff in their orders were just all made up, now I know that it really happens," she added. "So disgusting and embarrassing."

Perez went on to express concern that the Jollibee restaurant she had ordered from continued using "the same oil for how many hours after frying this FRIED TOWEL," possibly contaminating food served to other people.

Her Facebook post has since been shared more than 72,000 times. It is not clear if Perez complained about the order, or what action has been taken.

In a statement, Jollibee told Newsweek that the store that Perez ordered her food from will be closed for three days while it investigates the matter.

"We are deeply concerned about this matter and have conducted a thorough investigation on the incident. It is unfortunate that deviations from Jollibee's standard food preparation procedures occurred on the part of certain personnel of the store," a spokesperson said.

"As a result of this incident, we have directed the Jollibee Bonifacio - Stop Over branch to
close for three days starting tomorrow, June 3, to thoroughly review its compliance with
procedures and retrain its store team to ensure that this will not happen again. We will
also send out reminders to all stores to ensure the strict adherence to Jollibee's food
preparation systems.

"We at Jollibee are committed to take the necessary steps to maintain the trust and loyalty that our customers have given to us throughout the years."

A similar mishap took place at a KFC restaurant in northeast England in 2014.

Krystal Henderson described her disgust after her son was served a deep-fried blue paper towel after ordering from a branch in the town of Killingworth.

"I got a shock. I thought the actual chicken had gone off. All it was inside was deep-fried blue roll," Henderson told newspaper The Mirror.

"If it was bad chicken they might have just had a bad batch or something, but the blue roll could have been used for anything—it could have bleach or disinfectant on it."

She added: "I was traumatized by it—I was really upset. I went back into the store crying and they said I had to call customer service."

KFC later apologized to Henderson and explained that the blue paper towel had most likely originated from a tissue roll used for hygiene purposes.

In a statement to The Mirror, the franchise that operated the KFC in Killingworth said: "We're very sorry for Ms Henderson's experience and apologized to her immediately, as well as giving her a refund at the time of the incident.

"We take food quality and hygiene very seriously and unfortunately, on this extremely rare occasion, our restaurant failed to meet the high standards that both we and our customers expect."

Update: 2/4/21, 3:06 a.m. ET: This article has been updated a statement by Jollibee.