Shenzhen TV uncovers dirty kitchen of famed restaurant这样的自助餐你敢吃？
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A SHENZHEN TV program recently uncovered a worrisome kitchen at a buffet restaurant that is well-known in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Footage taken by a hidden camera revealed hygiene issues at the kitchen, which was also allegedly using fake shark’s fin and low-quality ingredients.
SZTV footage shows a chef using his fingers to test the temperature of rice at Four Seas International House.
A reporter from the program pretended to be a jobseeker and was recruited to work in the kitchen at Four Seas International House, a buffet restaurant chain that became popular all over China a few years ago, at Yitian Holiday Plaza in Nanshan.
The mind-blowing six-minute video shot by the reporter filmed a kitchen filled with careless chefs and kitchen helpers who paid no attention to the sanitary conditions of the food, kitchenware and utensils, or the quality of the food they were serving to the customers.
A worker uses a broom to clean kitchen utensils at the restaurant in Nanshan District in footage shot by an undercover reporter.
At the beginning of the video, a kitchen helper was filling a plate with steamed sticky rice while a chef used his bare hands to pile up the rice and even put his fingers into the rice to feel whether it had been heated up enough. Another kitchen worker came forward and grabbed a pinch of sticky rice to put in his mouth.
Similar things happened to the oysters, soup and abalone sauce. Without wearing gloves or a mask, a kitchen helper washed the oysters with bare hands. After that, the oysters were directly sent out to the dining section where customers picked at the raw oysters to eat.
According to the dialogue between the kitchen helper and the undercover reporter, the dead oysters were used for barbecue because the customers would not notice that some of them were dead and even deteriorated.
“The worst outcome is they (the customers) may suffer from food poisoning, but a little bit of dead oysters won’t claim their lives,” the kitchen helper joked with the reporter.
To cover up the deteriorated part, chefs would cover the barbecued oysters with mashed garlic and chilis, according to the kitchen helper.
He also said that the left-over oysters would be put into the refrigerator to be used the next day. The restaurant did not require them to throw away the left-over ones.
Another kitchen helper told the reporter that no real shark’s fins were used in the restaurant’s popular dish, rice with shark’s fin. Instead, some frozen synthetic fins were served to the customers. The package of the synthetic fins didn’t have an address, name of the food producer or any signs of food processing certification.
The program said that the restaurant not only served bad-quality food, but also did a poor job of maintaining the kitchen’s hygiene as the staff used dirty brooms and cloths to clean the kitchen after a day’s work.
One of the kitchen helpers taught the reporter to clean the oven and grill with a broom that had been used to sweep the floor while a pot of soup was still inside the oven. A lot of the kitchenware that was supposed to be used for cooking was used to hold water and detergent.
A broom was even used to clean a frying pan. It was even worse when staffers used dirty cloths to wipe vegetable juice or soup from the edge of dining plates. The kitchen helpers clearly displayed an ignorance of professional standards, such as using different cloths to clean different parts of the kitchen.
The stunning video has gone viral among Shenzhen residents, with many raising concerns about food safety when dining out.
An executive of the restaurant told Shenzhen TV that the eatery had room for improvement, but that the footage did not give a full view of the restaurant’s food quality. Government agencies are investigating the allegations.
(Editor Lily A)