A family visiting Coney Island says their New York vacation turned frightening after allegedly finding a razor blade inside a Nathan’s Famous hot dog.
In a TikTok video that’s now gone viral, they showed the small blade sitting beside a half-eaten hot dog purchased from the iconic Surf Avenue location. Luckily, no one was injured.
The family claims they simply wanted to film a “fun food review” for social media. Instead, their discovery prompted a health department investigation and concern over food safety at one of New York’s most recognizable brands.
The store manager denied that his workers were at fault, and it remains unclear where the dangerous item came from.
"All we wanted was to do a fun food review with the kids"
Nathan's Famous is a popular tourist stop, with its name recognition fueled by their annual hot dog eating contest. One family from Arizona made sure to stop by a Coney Island location, but ended up with more than they could eat.
“On Sunday, October 5th, around 7 p.m., at the location on 1310 Surf Ave, my husband bit into what he initially thought was a hard onion, but it turned out to be a blade inside his food,” Abbey told AMNY. “Once he spit it out, we saw the blade and notified the employees.”
"The manager stated that the hot dogs are not made there and claimed there was no way they came from their location,” she added. “He suggested it could have come from the onions or the mustard dispenser.”
Abbey posted footage of the razor on her TikTok account @ahhbee.24 two days later, gaining far more views than her thrift shopping videos ever have.
"All we wanted was to do a fun food review with the kids," she wrote. "Instead we found a blade inside the hot dog."
The New York Department of Health is reportedly investigating the incident after receiving a complaint.
How does a razor blade get inside a hot dog?
Stories of razor blades discovered in food are rather common in the U.S. and similar countries, often associated with Halloween candy. Every year, news reports warn of the potential for the sweet treats to contain sharp objects, drugs, or poison.
The pervasiveness of these tales combined with the absence of reports of actually injured children has led some experts to call the phenomenon nothing more than a legend.
"I couldn't find a single report of a child killed or seriously injured from a contaminated treat received during trick-or-treating," University of Delaware sociology and criminal justice professor Joel Best told CBC in 2019. "This is a contemporary legend, and that's all it is."
Anything is possible, but some commenters on Abbey's TikTok video suggested that the fault could be with food preparation equipment rather than malicious workers.
"Yeah that’s definitely part of the dicer," wrote @gabisgonnaleave, "the restaurant I work at uses those exact blades and they snap off way too easily."
"That's from the tomato and onion dicer," claimed allison._.s. "Happened to me when I worked at a cafe."
Either way, someone needs to up their food safety standards.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Nathan's Famous via contact form and @ahhbee.24 via TikTok.
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