h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The common experience of the English shopper is that if someone offers shoddy service or goods it is all too easy just to accept the situation and move, snarling and growling later when sufficiently distanced from the location of the event. In a place as large as the Trafford Centre it is important to forget the English reserve and get down to bare-knuckle fist fighting.

In an instance at the Rainforest Cafe an ordered Caeser Salad contained an unsettlingly large quantity of what appeared to be small bugs or insect carapaces. On closer inspection the items, about three millimetres in length, gave off an odour not dissimilar to the sort of Pot Pourri you find in small baskets scattered around elderly relatives houses.

When the waitress was queried on the presence of the objects in the salad it was reported to the manager. The resturant manager arrived some short time later and explained that the small smelly shells were in fact the pollen from trees that grew over the crop of lettuces in some field in middle France that supplied the restaurant. They were totally harmless and could safely be removed to allow consumption of the salad.

Still not happy with eating anything at all after finding what appeared to be dead bugs in a salad - and facing a main course including seafood, that most potentially dangerous of food stuffs if inproperly handled - the kitchen manager was finally directed to the table to explain further. The salad leaves, it was stated, often contained the pollen, but on this occasion the latest batch had had more than normal. The lettuce had been washed five times under supervision of the kitchen manager so very little of the offending pollen should have remained.

Ultimately all this conversation and detailed explanations of what appeared to be rather unusual salad-cleaning processes (and even more unusual sorces of lettuce) led to no charge being made for the salad, or indeed anything on the original order except two innocuous childrens' meals of nuggets and chips. However, it appeared that every form of resistance had been attempted to justify the strange content of the side order.

Remember - it's your money and your shopping trip. Try not to be too English when you go out there.

The Rainforest cafe is a rip off anyway. I mean who in their right mind would pay £12 for burger and chips?

Ah, but at Disney outside Paris there's a Rain Forest cafe and I had a marvellous meal there. So, I thought a similarly fabulous experience was going to result from a visit to the one at the Trafford Centre. Alas, as you can see, this was not to be the case at all - unless you like eating pollen.