Generally speaking I avoid garnish. Call me paranoid, but I've always been suspicious about how many plates it's been on. Of course this paranoia could be extended to just about every aspect of the dining experience (‘Has my steak been dropped on the floor?' ‘Did the waitress sneeze in my soup?' etc, etc.) but it turns out my fear of garnish wasn't quite so unfounded when a colleague found a worm perfectly positioned in the middle of a sprig of parsley in a beautiful bowl of gnocchi. (For the full story - and picture - from Jeanri-Tine click here.)

The incident reminded me of a story told to me a few weeks ago by a high-profile chef. He explained how, many years ago, working in the kitchen of an upmarket Johannesburg restaurant, he decided to track one piece of garnish. He was horrified to find that it landed on over 30 plates of food over the course of two days. (How's that for cost saving?) And that restaurant is still going today....

While the possibility that the garnish was moved from one plate to another has nothing to do with the worm, the fact that it wasn't properly washed (or the plate properly checked by the chef) begs the question; why do restaurants bother with garnish?

Garnish seems to be a necessary evil in a number of restaurants; everything from a slice of limp cucumber and a wedge of under-ripe tomato to a red cabbage leaf stuffed with slimy, brown, grated carrot. Or, heaven forbid, tomato-peel roses (remember those...)

If restaurants are struggling to make ends meet and are looking for cost-saving ideas (and they clearly are if they are recycling a leaf of rocket), then why not do away with garnish all together? I can think of many restaurants that don't go to the trouble of using garnish at all. Just recently I had a delicious lasagna at Atavola in Claremont - with no garnish. Hussar Grill in Rondebosch makes a mean fillet with Café de Paris butter - with, you guessed it... no garnish.

Having no garnish on the plate should not make the meal more unappetising. If anything, it should bring the actual dish to the fore, highlighting its colours and textures. Drown a plate in garnish and I start to get suspicious about what's beneath.

Have you had any nasty garnish experiences?