Real Or Fake? Fried Rat Head Allegedly Served At Popeyes In Chicken Order

Love that chicken from Popeyes? Better make sure it's not rodent infested after a fried rat head was allegedly served Sunday at a New York City franchise in Harlem.

Rosemary Thompson took to Facebook to document the incident. "Friends and family, this is a meal Popeyes in Harlem served my daughter, my niece and sister," Thompson wrote Sunday. "This is clearly a rat and they have the nerve to have a 5 rating by the department of health."

The netizen turned to social media after she was not immediately contacted by Popeyes customer service department. "People, please free to share this picture," she said. "Think about all the other rat that have been served and the lasting effect this will have on my daughter, niece and sister."

Readers paid attention to Thompson’s post. It soon went viral with more than 100,000 shares on Facebook.

Renee Kopowski, a spokeswoman for Popeyes, told DNAinfo Monday the corporate office reached out to the Harlem restaurant. The owner of the Harlem franchise, who was not identified by DNAinfo, is "upset" over the incident. A statement from the restaurant in question has not been released yet.

For now, it has not yet been determined if the fried rat head is a hoax or real. But the last time something like this happened, it was fake.

In June 2015, Kentucky Fried Chicken was accused of serving a fried rat to a customer. An independent lab concluded that the fried food was chicken, even if it was in the shape of a rat.

The customer alleged that a manager said the fried chicken was a rat and apologized, but when KFC investigated the incident, they found the claim to be untrue.

"We did an internal investigation and talked to all employees. That statement is false," KFC spokesman Rodrigo Coronel said in an email to the Huffington Post at the time. "The right thing for this customer to do is to apologize and cease making false claims about the KFC brand."

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