Red Lobster Research Paper

Something Fishy at Seafood Restaurants

It’s Friday night and after a grueling week at work, a gentleman decides to treat his girlfriend to a relaxing dinner at a nice seafood restaurant. They decide to splurge and order a very expensive lobster dish. The bill arrives and it is pricey. However, they think it’s worth it because they believe they have just eaten fresh quality “lobster”. Unfortunately, there is a chance that the lobster is a cheap substitute. “It emerged that in thirty five percent of lobster dishes, there are cheaper substitute seafood instead.”(Inside Edition). Suddenly, people aren’t quite as excited about the expensive lobster dish they just purchased. Muckraking still exists in 2016 as evidenced in Inside Edition’s
“There were twenty eight different restaurants across the country that were found guilty of lobster fraud” (Inside Edition). Some of these restaurants include Red Lobster, world famous Nathan's, and even local restaurants like Get Hooked (Inside Edition). Red Lobster is the nation's largest seafood chain” (Inside Edition). Many would think that because Red Lobster a large seafood chain their lobster would be real. However, that is not the case. Red lobster claims to serve lobsters bisque along with many other seafood dishes. However, when the lobster bisque was tested, one sample came back as one hundred percent langostino. “Langostino is a much cheaper fish that is more apart of the hermit crab family than the lobster family and cost just have as much as Lobster” (Inside Edition). According to the FDA, “soup with only langostino cannot be called lobster bisque”(Inside Edition). However, in some cases this wasn’t the seafood restaurant's’ fault. “A local seafood restaurant outside of Tamp called Get Hooked, had been buying frozen lobster from a vendor and didn’t realize that his lobster was not real”(Inside Edition, When asked about the lack of lobster in his lobster dishes the restaurant owner claimed that he was not trying to rip off his customers. The vendor had mislead him and he exposed that vendor to the
When confronted with allegations of lobster fraud, Red Lobster responded with the following statement, “ that their most recent mixture of lobster contains both Maine lobster and Langostino lobster and Red Lobster said that they question the validity of Inside Edition’s test where they found one cup of bisque that only contained Langostino lobster”(Taylor). However, some restaurants like Sofia’s, a go to seafood restaurant in Manhattan, slammed the door in Inside Edition’s reporters face in denial when reporters went to go confront the restaurant” (Inside Edition). Red Lobster also said that they will be making changes to their menu to inform customers about what their lobster dishes actually contain. Not only does this affect the restaurants but it also affects the customers. Most people will think twice before ordering an expensive lobster