That awkward moment you use a high-end restaurant's beef steak to illustrate a story about human meat

Most journalists and picture editors have probably been there - scratching around for an appropriate stock image to illustrate a story.

Sadly, we're not sure the MailOnline got it quite right with this story after a high-end London restaurant queried why the paper was using an image of its prime steak to illustrate a story about human meat.

Tweeting from his restaurant's official account, Hawksmoor founder Will Beckett was clearly unimpressed with the use of his beef under the headline: "Nigerian restaurant shut down for serving HUMAN FLESH".

Speaking to i100.co.uk, Beckett said: "Someone sent me through the link asking if this was our steak and yes, it is. It's a sliced chateaubriand from Yorkshire Longhorn cattle that we serve at all our restaurants, which have won numerous 'best steak in the UK' awards."

Despite receiving hundreds of retweets, the image was still being used on the article by Tuesday morning - three days after it was published.

For clarity's sake we don't serve human flesh, there are no severed heads in our kitchen, and we've never even been nominated for 'Nigeria's Best Restaurant' or 'Cannibal Menu of the Year'.

Whereas the Mail's main complaint appears to be that the human flesh was expensive I can also assure you that while our steak isn't cheap it is excellent value.

• Will Beckett, Hawksmoor

The MailOnline story, which has been shared more than 24k times, also uses a stock image of pork steak - which according to this Independent article from last year is probably a more accurate depiction of what human meat is like anyway...

To add to this, Snopes has also cast wider doubt on the accuracy of the "Nigerian restaurant serves human meat" story - which has been reported on by several international media outlets.

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