BY: Denver Sean
Published 9 years ago
A French girl named Eloise went to The Plaza tea with her family — and ended up biting off way more than she could or SHOULD chew.
She claims she found a dead baby rat in her sandwich.
via NYP:
“Oui, it was very bad,” Eloise Faux, 16, told The Post of the Christmas-week tempest in a tea party that involved the French Consulate, the NYPD and an ambulance ride to the hospital.
Faux, her friend Elodie and Faux’s Uncle Laurent were enjoying “Eloise at The Plaza” high tea in the Midtown hotel’s Palm Court on Monday as part of a long-dreamed-of vacation from their native France.
“She had seen the Eloise movies,” recalled the uncle, Laurent Faux, 43. “She was very excited and full of fun and energy!”
At some point, Laurent put down his champagne flute and took a bite from a turkey finger sandwich.
The Faux family and Plaza management have wildly divergent accounts of what happened next.
“We find a rat! A baby rat, yes!” Eloise told The Post on Thursday over the phone from her home in Fontainebleau, some 60 miles outside Paris.
A Palm Court spokesman said the incident “is purely a hoax.”
“This situation has been thoroughly investigated, and it is unequivocally a meritless claim,” he said, while noting the restaurant’s recent “A” grade from the Department of Health.
Plaza security footage viewed by The Post shows the uncle handing his plate to Eloise, and Eloise then secreting the plate under the table for several seconds before handing it back.
The video also confirms that pandemonium — at least compared to the dainty surroundings — then erupted at the posh hotel.
A manager, a chef, a Plaza security guard and eventually a cop and an ambulance worker converged on the table.
“They kept saying it was a cranberry,” Laurent said of management.Finding nothing criminal afoot, a cop deferred to an ambulance worker.
“But the ambulance lady told the manager this is no cranberry.”
Their tea abandoned, the family were taken in an ambulance to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where, according to a discharge form shared by Laurent, a doctor wrote, “The remnant you brought looks like the top half of a baby rodent.”
Pierre Cournot, general counsel for the French Consulate, said he would help the family find a lawyer in hopes of recouping the $300 cost of the tea.
“The pictures are pretty nasty looking,” Cournot said.
Now Eloise is afraid of sandwiches, claims her uncle, adding, “I just want an apology.”