Vegetarians BEWARE!. Review on Sbarro, Malad West, Mumbai

I haven't written on mouthshut for a while, and sadly I'm coming back with a negative review... anyone who reads my reviews knows that I'm crazy about Italian food and I'm a VEGETARIAN.

Having spent my childhood eating Sbarros in NY, I was naturally thrilled to find out this NY Italian chain that had finally come to India. The last few visits there were pretty uneventful - I liked the stuffed vegetarian slice (spinach, ricotta and brocolli) and the plain cheese (NY style cheese pizza) slice quite a bit, thought their desserts were disgusting, but figured since most Sbarros outlets are in the food courts of malls, I could always grab dessert elsewhere - like gelato after a slice.

What I wasn't anticipating, however, was just how careless and disrespectful the staff could be. This visit at the Inorbit Mall (Malad) outlet, instead of just getting my regular slice and iced tea, I decided to also try the vegetarian stromboli. I'd tried their veg kheema stromboli before, thinking it was spinach, not kheema. And I hated that because just the name "kheema" put me off. This time, I confirmed with the guy at the cash counter about whether they had the spinach stromboli before I paid and he confirmed it was spinach. They told me my order would take about five minutes, but when I went back to the counter, it turned out they had forgot or been confused about my order and it took over 10 minutes for them to heat the slices of pizza and the veg spinach stromboli that I'd ordered. I managed to stay patient and waited until I was finally served. The ridiculous wait wasn't the bad part... here's the bad part... I went back to my table with my slices, where I was splitting the stromboli with the person I was having lunch with. As I broke the stromboli, I thought it smelled funny... I thought maybe it was the smells around the food court (I'm a little sensitive to the smell of meat and stuff), so I took a bite and that's when horror struck! I realized there was something not right and I spit the stromboli out in my napkin (just doing that was horrifying for me because I was in the middle of a food court, but I was not about to swallow something so vile). That's when I stared into the stromboli and realized there were whitish grayish cubes in the roll, not the fresh greens I was hoping to see. I marched back to the counter where I asked the guy at the cash register (the one who confirmed they had spinach strombolis) if that was CHICKEN??? He calmly said it was and said sorry like it was no big deal. I flung the vile food across the counter at him, screamed my head off, got my refund, and got his name, my server's name and the email address of the franchise owner.

In the meantime, the guy who had served me had disappeared into the back of the outlet - he probably knew it was his turn next. I realize this is India, not America, where the franchise owner could be sued until he went bankrupt for violating someone's food preferences. I will write to him and hope to at least get an apology and an assurance that they'll be careful with other customers (I know I'm never going back there, so all I can do is hope other vegetarians are not violated like  this). The outlet manager did try to apologize by bringing me the veg stromboli that I'd actually ordered and a complimentary drink and a brownie... I refused to accept it and when he wouldn't take it back, I just slammed that stuff back on his counter before leaving. Honestly, I'd rather pay double and get what I asked for, than almost ingest chicken and get a lousy coke and brownie as an apology.

I'm still so horrified and disgusted by the incident that I'm surprised I didn't scream at him a bit longer. Seriously, some of us take being a vegetarian seriously. And it's not about religious issues (I'm pretty much agnostic), it's about loving animals that are alive and being disgusted with killing animals for food. If I love dogs, I'll love chickens too, even though they're not cute and friendly and adorable. I won't name names on this site (although I will in the complaint mail that I'm sending to the manager/owner), because I don't want the staff to get in trouble. I just think the owner of the franchise needs to better train the staff to ensure this kind of nonsense doesn't happen. There are plenty of people in this country (including me) who don't want to ingest dead animals in any form. I was horrified and still feel sick when I think about what happened.

I know for sure that I will never go to sbarros again - I've never had such a horrible, disgusting experience at Dominos, where I've been going to/ordering from for many, many years. I figure they deserve my loyalty - they may deliver slightly late once in a while, but they've never violated my trust. So all I'm going to say is - go to Sbarros if you absolutely must and have no other safer, cleaner options, but vegetarians beware! Poke and prod and sniff at your food, before you dare to take a bite!