A hungry backpacker is feeling frustrated after staff at her latest hostel provided her with plastic cutlery to eat a meal of steak and chips.

The meal which cost just $10 was served in a plastic takeaway carton at a backpackers in Perth this evening.

Caroline Gough who spent the best part of an hour attempting to eat the meal told us: “It’s really great when hostels offer cheap meals to backpackers, and I can see that whilst it may not be great for the environment, using disposable trays and cutlery prevents the washing up issue that occur so frequently in hostels.

However the people who organise this meal have clearly never attempted to cut up a piece of steak with a plastic knife. That in itself is difficult enough, but when the steak is balanced unevenly on some chips and limp lettuce in a wobbly plastic container it becomes even harder.”

Caroline did observe that a few backpackers were using normal knives to cut their steaks. “I enquired as to where the normal knives were kept and discovered that not only were there none left but that other people had already reserved to have these normal knives passed on to them when the first people had finished.”

Caroline added “When I saw the chalkboard advert for the meal, it did say to hurry because stocks were limited. I assumed they meant the steak, I now know they were talking about the knives.

It’s a good marketing trick because having spent so much time and effort carving off minuscule pieces of meat at a time, I’m really hungry and contemplating dessert.

I probably won’t have one though, as it’s apple pie and using a plastic spoon to slice through hard pastry doesn’t sound like much fun at all.”