Gelato….mmm….or was it….ugh!!!
Coogee Bay Hotel, one of Sydney’s premier pubs, owned by Chris Cheung, is facing a serious crisis with patron Jessica Whyte accusing the hotel that gelato she was served at the hotel made her very ill and contained human faeces.
With the Coogee Bay Hotel having won the Australian Hotels Association’s hotel of the year award in 2005 and 2006, yesterdays offering of free ice cream, may have been rather a PR gaff,
Stephen and Jessica Whyte claim that when they were at the hotel over three weeks ago to watch the NRL grand final, they were forced to complain about a number of issues and as a result, in what they though at the time as a gesture of conciliation by the hotel, were offered complimentary ice-cream .
Mrs Whyte says that she knew after the first mouthful that she was getting more than gelato and became violently ill, spitting the contents into a napkin, which her family later sent to the National Measurements Institute, with tests revealing that the ice cream contained what were described as “properties similar to human excreta”.
The family’s lawyer, Steven Lewis said that the family contacted him on Friday after giving up trying to deal with the hotel.
The hotel called a media conference, with hotel GM Tony Williams saying in a statement, “If indeed this allegation is proved to have occurred, we believe it must have been some form of sabotage”.
Mr Williams also said in his statement that when the claim was first made, the hotel immediately stopped serving the product, quarantined it and began conducting an internal review to assess whether there was any further evidence of contamination, as claimed by the Whytes and there was not.
He added, “We also tried to maintain open lines of communication with the Whytes, however, our discussions ultimately broke down, if we did not pay them up to $1 million.”
Mr Lewis on behalf of the Whytes said that accusations his client had asked for up to $1 million were “rubbish” and that this was not a question of money for the family, but rather that they wanted to make sure it would not happen again, adding, “Let me assure you no one ever demanded any money”.
A Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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