Colorado restaurant responds to claims there was a maggot in their food

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KOAA) — A social media post generated a lot of reaction as a Colorado restaurant is now defending its reputation.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT FROM EL PASO COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH.

Rebecca VanGorder turned to a community page on Facebook and posted the following Monday evening:

"So a friend of mine very kindly bought food from the El Super Taco on the Mesa for a bunch of us that set up our youth group's fall festival. Unfortunately I found that I had already eaten a whole taco by the time I saw what's in the pictures. The restaurant is claiming it's rice. Let me know what you think."

VanGorder wanted to point out to News5 that nowhere in her post did she mention anything about the photo depicting a maggot, but multiple people jumped to that conclusion in the comments. More than 300 people had shared their thoughts, some believing the item in question was rice while others were convinced it was a maggot.

A photo of the item in question is at the top of this article. The restaurant is located just south of Colorado Springs off Mesa Ridge Parkway.

The social media post became so widespread that Super Taco decided to share its own post on social media on Tuesday morning:

"Unfortunately we had an incident of an accusation of maggots in our food yesterday that went viral, we directly contacted our health department and they conducted an inspection."

El Super Taco included documents from El Paso County Public Health. News5 confirmed the documents were legitimate. In the general comments section of the investigation, El Pas County Public Health noted they did a site visit and the "plate of food in question was saved by the facility." The piece of rice in question was reportedly kept and still on the plate.

"It was observed to be rice, and other pieces of rice were able to re-create the same appearance when zoomed in on with a phone camera. Raw rice in storage and cooked rice in the steam well were thoroughly inspected and no maggots were observed."

News5 spoke with a manager of El Super Taco, who said the order was carryout and delivered by DoorDash. The business shared a picture of the receipt they kept, because they wanted to make it clear they took immediate action to contact the health department and put an end to any concerns over their food.

The restaurant has a 94% approval rating on Facebook as of Wednesday afternoon.

Christine ordered through DoorDash. Super Taco kept the receipt. No concerns of how they handle food, did their due diligence to prove they handle food properly. They weren't afraid to contact the health department to confirm it was rice.

A manager at El Super Taco also provided the following statement to News5:

"At El Super Taco, we take food safety and customer trust very seriously. When a social media post recently claimed a grain of rice was a maggot, we immediately contacted the local health department for a full inspection. Their official report confirms that our kitchen is spotless and that the item in question was indeed just a grain of rice.

We appreciate our community’s support and encourage everyone to rely on verified information rather than online speculation. Our priority has always been — and will always be — serving safe, quality food to our guests.”

What we want people to understand is how much damage a single post can cause. Small, family-run places like ours don’t have huge marketing teams or PR budgets. When something false goes viral, it can hurt the reputation we’ve built over years — and it affects the cooks, servers, and families who rely on this restaurant to make a living.

We appreciate everyone who took the time to wait for the facts, and we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done — serving the food we love to the people we care about.”

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