Tag Archives: cockroach

Passing the blame: ‘unreliable students and migrants’ reason Melbourne cockroach-infested eatery fined $20,000

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A Melbourne restaurant has been fined $20,000 after an inspector found its kitchen infested with cockroaches, rodent droppings and accumulated grease, dirt and food waste.

A director of Ten Ren’s Tea Station agreed to temporarily shut its upstairs kitchen on March 7 this year – after a complaint from a customer – when authorities feared for public health.

Senior magistrate Dan Muling yesterday said there was no justification or excuse for the conditions and told its directors they ”wouldn’t have your own kitchen looking like this”.

Prosecutor Sebastian Reid said the initial inspection revealed the kitchen to have ”heavy infestation” of cockroaches, some rodent activity and no method to sanitise food contact surfaces and utensils.

Mr Reid listed more than 30 examples of Food Act breaches to walls, the floor, bowls, fridges and freezers, shelves, door seals, handles, exhaust hood and microwave oven.
These included a high number of live and nesting cockroaches, rodent droppings and heavy accumulation of grease, dirt, food waste and rubbish on the floor, under fridges, cooking equipment and kitchen benches.

Defence barrister Tim Bourke said the directors started the restaurant in 2008 and had employed unreliable students and migrants.

7,000 fine for Australian pizza joint; cockroaches not considered a topping

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The former operator of a north Canberra takeaway pizza restaurant has been fined more than $7000 after three customers found cockroaches in their meals.

Whono’s Pty Ltd, a company formerly trading as Domino’s Pizza in Dickson, was yesterday convicted of four breaches of the territory’s food safety laws.

The Canberra Times reports the store was shut down for two days in May last year after health authorities discovered a cockroach infestation and shoddy cleaning practices at the store.

The investigation came after three customers independently complained of finding cockroaches in their food.

Sole director and shareholder Alex Michael Duncan, who appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday, sold the lease on the business in November last year partly due to the fall-out from the cockroach infestation.

Cockroach toppings land pizza shop in court

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Blaming the staff is never a good strategy.

But that’s exactly what the operator of a Domino’s pizza joint in Canberra, Australia, did while pleading guilty to four breaches of ACT food safety laws after cockroaches were repeatedly found on takeaway pizzas and pasta.

In an interview with authorities, the operator admitted the restaurant battled a cockroach problem for six months. He also accused staff of failing to follow the store’s cleaning regime and of falsifying completed cleaning records.

The prosecution has said three unrelated customers, on three separate occasions, raised the issue with ACT Health in April and May last year.

Documents tendered before Magistrate Grant Lalor yesterday revealed the restaurant was inspected three times in May after the customers complained of vermin in their food.

Authorities were first alerted to the infestation when a customer photographed a slice of barbecue chicken pizza containing a cockroach; another separate but similar complaint was made the next day.

The following month a public health officer inspected the Cape Street restaurant.

A statement of facts said the officer "found the premises to have a large number of non-compliant issues" and ordered pest control treatment take place within a week.

I make my own pizza.

Cockroaches commandeer Orlando school kitchens

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Inspectors have found infestations of German cockroaches in or near the cafeterias or kitchens of 22 Orange County public schools.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that students at many of the schools are eating cold lunches prepared in a central kitchen while the facilities are cleaned and debugged. While the cafeterias are closed, students at 12 of the schools have been eating under outdoor tents or in their classroom, said district spokeswoman Kathy Marsh.

Although school food facilities are inspected every four to eight weeks, the cockroach infestations were missed during daytime inspections, she said.

"Unacceptable" levels of bugs at 22 schools were found during nighttime inspections of all 188 Orange schools Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Most infestations were in the kitchen, the cafeteria or both, but a few schools had bugs in a storage room or bathrooms near the cafeteria.

Mike Eugene, chief operations officer for the district, said each of the 22 schools had dozens of cockroaches, though none had contaminated food. The school district has set up a 24-hour hotline — 407-318-3030 — which will operate through Sunday night, so that parents can get inspection updates on their child’s school.

He called infestations at 22 schools "an unacceptable number," though the schools had passed health inspections.

Eugene said he and other managers did the inspections, and some food in dry storage had to be thrown out. He said the German cockroaches are resistant to the pesticides the schools had been using.

In the future, regular inspections will be done at night, Marsh said. One school, Memorial Middle, has been cleared of bugs and lunches are being served as usual again, she said.

The school district began the inspections after WKMG-Channel 6 in Orlando took administrators an undercover video of cockroaches at Pineloch Elementary.

Baker makes up for cockroach loaf

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New Zealand’s biggest baking company is promising compensation to a man who found a cockroach in a loaf of bread.

The firm, Goodman Fielder promised compensation to Rob Hemming, but he heard nothing more until the Herald on Sunday got involved.

Now the company says it will send him a $60 voucher and a ham, but insists the cockroach was not baked into its bread.

Hemming discovered the insect in his bread a month ago.

"The next day I pulled it out of the fridge for breakfast and I spotted a blooming cockroach embedded in the bread."

He took the bread back to the Selwyn Heights Four Square in Rotorua, whose manager offered Hemming a replacement. But he decided to deal with the manufacturer directly.

Hemming called Goodman Fielder. A representative apologised and told him to freeze the loaf and she would post him some packaging to return it.

The first package did not turn up, and it was two weeks before the replacement arrived.

Goodman Fielder spokesman Ian Greenshields said the loaf had been examined at an independent laboratory; "Their tests showed the cockroach was not baked into the product but there was a hole in the bag and the cockroach could easily and most probably crawled into the bag," Greenshields said.

Four Square owner Amish Patel was confident the cockroach had not got into the bread at his shop.

Dead cockroaches found in food safety log at Waterloo’s Chinese Canteen

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The owner of the Chinese Canteen in Waterloo Road, London (the U.K. one, not Canada) has been ordered to pay nearly £5,000 after food safety inspectors found mouse droppings, dead cockroaches and dirty surfaces and utensils at the premises.

London SE1 reports that at one inspection environmental health officers from Southwark Council spotted two dead cockroaches squashed in the food safety log as well as seeing one crawling across a surface used for food preparation.

The owner of the Chinese Canteen pleaded guilty to seven separate food safety offences at Camberwell Green Magistrates Court on Friday 12 November.

George Colairo, proprietor of the restaurant since 1998, was ordered to pay £2,000 for the seven offences, in addition to nearly £3,000 for the full legal costs for Southwark Council.

In June of this year food safety inspectors from Southwark Council visited the premises, and discovered the mouse droppings and evidence of cockroaches.

Environmental health officers also spotted cooked meat on a shelf in a dirty sieve, with the run off liquid dripping into a bowl of open cooked noodles below.

They also saw cooked foods, such as cooked meat and prawn crackers, being kept in dirty, used cardboard boxes, food handlers not washing their hands as often as necessary or sanitising surfaces to protect food safety and food being left open in containers with no – or ill fitting – lids

After a warning to clean up the premises immediately they returned the next day to find none of the necessary action had taken place and the business was shut down.
 

The four-star roach

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A cockroach appeared on the table of five diners at the super snazzy New York eatery, Jean Georges, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s four-star kitchen and dining room on the first floor of 1 Central Park West.

“A woman at the table screamed and the whole restaurant went quiet,” said Lois Freedman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vongerichten, who was not in the restaurant at the time.

Sam Sifton of the N.Y. Times reports that waiters and captains moved to the table with grim alacrity, said people who saw them whisk the aggrieved customers to a new table. … Champagne was brought to the table of the woman who had screamed, and further treats after that: an additional course was added to the restaurant’s three-course, $98 prix fixe dinner, and desserts, and dessert wine. The restaurant’s captain kept a close eye on the table. At least one other table received a round of free drinks as a way of thanking them for their forbearance.

Bring your own cockroach, although I would never recommend that, especially when Jean Georges received an inspection score of 23 from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which translates to a B.
 

Cockroach for breakfast ‘just gross’ even if in lovely New Zealand

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Eleven-year-old Ariana Lee was disgusted to find a cockroach in her breakfast boysenberries.

APN News & Media reports that the Rotorua girl and her family (right, pic from APN) were having cereal and boysenberries for breakfast on Wednesday when they made the stomach-turning discovery.

Ariana’s mother, Zarnia Lee, said her husband, Jymel Webber, who is visually impaired, was the first to open the tin of Pams boysenberries in syrup and eat from it. Her son Taine, 11, and daughter Tayla, 9, also ate some and when Ariana emptied the last of them from the tin into her cereal, she noticed something black fall into her bowl.

When she looked closer, she realised it was a cockroach and screamed for her mother.

"The cockroach was pretty purple, I could tell it had been in there a while," Mrs Lee said.

Mrs Lee rang Pams’ customer service hotline and gave the details of her complaint. She received a letter of apology from Pams and two $10 vouchers for Pak’N Save.
 

Restaurant manager eats cockroach to destroy evidence

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Consumers, when dining at a food establishment, or opening some food at home, and discovering a foreign object, or something gross, or a cockroach, do not turn the evidence over to the restaurant or the retailer. Call the local health unit. Otherwise, the proof may be gone (at least take a picture with your cell phone, but they can be photoshoped too easily).

Huang Xiaogang and friends were having their meal at a restaurant in Caidian of Wuhan province recently in China.

Huang found a black creature in the bowl of mushrooms and picked it up with his chopsticks.

To his surprise that tiny black thing was a dead cockroach and complained to the restaurant manager, reports the Daily Chilli.

The manager said that the insect had been "sterilised in high temperature" and was not dirty anymore.

Assuring Huang that the insect would not cause any harm to their health, he picked it up and swallowed it.

The manager later told health officers that he was afraid that the customers would demand high compensation that is why he swallowed the cockroach to destroy evidence.

He then waived off Huang’s bill of 570 Yuan.

Hospitality horrors in Hamilton, New Zealand

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barfblogger, graduate student and salad sous chef Katie is on her way from New Zealand (below, left, exactly as shown) to her hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, famous for being cold, where Wayne Gretzky played junior hockey for a bit, and home to the greatest NHL goaltender ever and my teenage-idol, Tony Esposito (and his brother, Phil, who scored a few goals over the years for the Boston Bruins).

Katie will attend Kansas State University for the summer semester and finish up those pesky MS details, like writing a thesis.

She leaves behind New Zealand, for now, and I don’t know if she ever traveled to Hamilton, N.Z., but the Waikato Times reports that more than 320 Hamilton restaurants, takeaways, eateries and caterers have failed food safety inspections in the past year and one was so dirty the council closed it down straight away.

Hamilton City Council’s environment health team inspects the city’s 800 food businesses each year and just over half pass on the first inspection.

Horror stories include filthy kitchens and surfaces covered with cockroaches.

Of the businesses inspected since July 2009, 64 had critical food safety issues which include dirtiness and food being stored either at wrong temperatures or risking cross contamination with raw food.