A DINER boycotted one of his favourite restaurants after discovering foie gras on the menu.

Provender, in High Street, Wanstead, has since stopped serving the dish after Ashley Gunstock called it an "appalling abuse of animal rights".

The 60-year-old, who lives in Wanstead, was eating at the restaurant with his wife Louise and friends on Friday, December 22, when he discovered the return of a product he thought had been dropped.

Mr Gunstock was part of successful Green Party campaign encouraging Provender to abandon foie gras in 2012.

An actor by trade, Mr Gunstock said he was dismayed to see it return but glad the owner had listened to criticisms.

He said: “I was angry to see it back. The staff at Provender are lovely and we’ve had many good meals there but if my wife and I see foie gras on a menu we immediately discount those restaurants.

"The owner's done the decent thing and taken it off. I was very upset but I don't want to appear churlish. I would go back."

Before the boycott, the couple went to Provender for big occasions.

Mr Gunstock said: “Before Friday, we’d go once a month. I took my sister-in-law there for my birthday and wife goes there with friends.

"We went there for our anniversary dinners and to eat in a pleasant atmosphere. It was my favourite restaurant in Wanstead.”

As a result, Mr Gunstock said another campaign would be launched within Waltham Forest and Redbridge to get restaurants to stop serving the product.

He said: “We’re not going into restaurants and singling people out to make an example out of them. We just happen to find foie gras on menus in places we go to in our community.

“My message to other restaurants is please don’t put foie gras on your menus – it’s awfully unethical.

“I am a vegetarian and I don’t see the point of slaughtering animals. Animal rights are not taken as seriously as I’d like and even less so nowadays.”

The 60-year-old, who has been a member of the Green Party since 1989, was also part of a successful campaign to get Belgique to stop serving foie gras in 2010.

Foie gras is a luxury food item made of duck or goose liver. It is controversial because the animal is force fed to the point where its liver becomes ten times its normal size.

Christophe Hubert, owner of Provender said: “We took it off the menu a long time ago. We put it back recently for the season because it’s something we eat at Christmas time in France.

“We can stop ordering it. We change the menu at the beginning of the year. It’s not that important to me to have it, I can take it off. I don’t want anyone upset.”