What to Do When There's a Hair in Your Food

To a lot of people, the worst possible thing that can happen to them while eating out in a restaurant is finding a hair in their food. Having spent decades waiting tables, I can assure you that is not even close to the worst possible thing. I once served a dessert made by a vengeful line cook who wanted to enact revenge upon me for some unbeknownst reason. I’m sure my customers would have welcomed a stray hair in their food more than they did the catfish tail the cook had baked into their brownie bottom pie. The average head has 100,000 hairs on it, with up to 100 falling out in a single day. The likelihood of a random hair finding its way onto a plate of food is much higher than winning the lottery, but people fully believe they will win Powerball before they ever experience a strand of hair in their angel hair pasta. So, what should you do when you find a hair in your food?

Don’t freak out 

It’s a hair, not a hand grenade; it will not hurt you. You must first establish the head whence the hair originated. Examine it and compare it to your own before concluding it came from the kitchen. Is the hair sitting on top of the food or in the food? If it’s lying directly on top of it, there’s a pretty good chance it’s just settling in and didn’t come from very far away. If it’s covered in sauce or cooked inside a burger, it’s safe to say it probably came from the kitchen. 

Tell your server

It doesn’t need to be announced over a public address system and you can leave the megaphone out of it. This isn’t something every other diner needs to know about; it’s between you and your server. While it may be upsetting, try to be understanding. This wasn’t intentional and it’s not the end of the world. When people find an eyelash on their cheek, they make a wish, but when they find a hair on their plate they make a scene. You’re not alerting everyone about a fire, so stay calm.

Wait to see what the resolution will be

Your server and or the restaurant manager will assess the situation and determine how best to make things right. Even if it’s a blond hair that’s 14 inches long and everyone in the kitchen has either short hair with a hairnet or a shaved head, most restaurants are going to quickly apologize and offer to remake your food. They may even take the item off your bill. Your food will be remade as quickly as possible and your only option is to wait for a new plate to arrive minutes later. Or, you can do what you do when you’re at home and you find a random hair in your food: pull it out and go on with your life. If you have a cat or a dog, you probably eat a little bit of hair with every meal. Think of it as extra fiber. 

Accept the apology

No restaurant wants to be remembered as the place that served hair and they should apologize profusely. Once they do that and have served you a hair-free entree, let bygones be bygones. Going on and on about it makes it look like you weren’t satisfied with how they fixed the problem. Going on to Yelp and leaving a bad review about it makes you look petty. If you do feel the need to announce to the Internet that you found a hair in your food, make sure to also mention how it was handled. Readers will appreciate knowing all the details.

There are far grosser things

Nobody wants to find hair in their food. Even finding a strand of our own can be off-putting, but let’s remember how not a big deal it is. Hair is simply a filament full of keratin-filled cells that are called keratinocytes. Some of it drifts through the air every time we scratch our heads or nod enthusiastically when our server asks if we want dessert. If you do discover a hair in your food, just be glad it wasn’t a catfish tail baked into your brownie bottom pie.