Restaurant group Whitbread apologises for adding pork to its beef lasagne before updating online menus

The inclusion of pork in a dish labelled as beef lasagne risks offending customers who do not eat it for religious reasons

The company admits it didn’t update online menus for its Table Table restaurants (David Anstiss/Creative Commons)

Restaurant company Whitbread has apologised for adding pork to its beef lasagne before updating its menus.

The company, whose outlets include the Whitbread Inns restaurants as well as Beefeater Grill and Brewers Fayre, made the alteration to its online menus on Monday despite changing the recipe in September.

Whitbread said that the physical menus in all of its restaurants were updated when the recipe was changed, and were therefore not affected by the discrepancy, dismissing some media reports.

A spokesperson for the company told The Independent: “As most people will be aware, a traditional Italian lasagne recipe would typically include a beef and pork ragu.

“We are confident, therefore, that our customers would have been presented with the correct menu when ordering their meal.”

“We mistakenly, and with no ill intent, missed updating the online menus for our Table Table and Whitbread Inns brands, but as soon as we were alerted to this we corrected them.”

Although many traditional recipes for lasagne include both beef and pork, the “mistake” risks offending Jews and Muslims, whose religion forbids them to eat pork.

Whitebread was also involved in the horsemeat scandal of 2013.

Tests at the time found that supplier Creative Food provided the restaurant group with lasagne that contained horse DNA.