Metro uncovers our food nightmares

MEAT on the floor, rats in the ceiling and filthy walls and surfaces – they are Buffalo City Metro’s very own kitchen nightmares.

This week Saturday Dispatch went into restaurants and supermarkets armed with the alarming findings of city health inspectors.

BCM officials had discovered a litany of transgressions among many of the municipality’s registered food businesses during routine inspections.

Nearly a third of premises that handle food failed to comply with basic health regulations. Supermarkets were worse, with 38% receiving non-compliance notices (see page 5).

Our investigation revealed the horrifying sight of a Buffalo Flats butcher dumping a haunch of meat on the bloodstained cold-room floor.

Buffalo City Butchery owner Louis Pantshwa claimed this practice was temporary, “just while they are working with it”.

Owners or managers who spoke to us were nevertheless convinced their standards of hygiene were good.

But veteran doyenne of fine dining, Grazia Linden, looked at photographs of 10 local kitchens and picked out week-old sauce dribbled on a tiled wall, a chef’s jacket “which looks like he has been mopping the floor with it”, and cooks and cleaners punching away on their cellphones.

Despite her empathy for the struggling sector, Linden said standards of cleanliness had to be maintained regardless.

Working off a list of worst offenders provided by BCM acting director of health services and public safety Steve Terwin and BCM environmental health services manager Andile Falati, the Dispatch observed:

• Rats living in a supermarket ceiling, causing insulation sheeting to droop with poop;

A Buffalo Flats Spar kitchen worker dicing mushrooms in a grubby, jumbled receiving area;

Clear signs of a lack of deep cleaning in the kitchens of popular Beacon Bay and Stirling restaurants Shanghai, Delicious Chinese and Nina Deli; and

Leading local pasta and pizza maker Nina’s Pizzeria operating with a permanent hole in the kitchen wall.

Rural Berlin supermarket worker Jireh Savmore admitted they sifted weevils from infested bags of flour and threw the grubs out the door.

But owner-manager Greg Kaiser emphatically denied BCM claims that they sold it on to customers or used it in their bakery.

Epsom Road Food Mart owner Kawsaer Mirdha denied an inspector's finding of signs that someone was sleeping in the kitchen.

He showed the Dispatch his bed in a room next to the kitchen, saying he washed at the shop, but bathed at a friend’s home in Vincent.

Chi Chi Chinese Food and Sushi Bar refused to allow a peek into their kitchen. An aggressive young manager tried to call the “owner”, who turned out to be a surprised Christine Wong, manager of Delicious Chinese.

Wong denied being the owner of Chi Chi.

BCM inspectors found no sign of any detergent in Chi Chi’s “very, very dirty, disorganised kitchen”, said Falati. Utensils were old and chipped and pots had no handles.

The state of the kitchen of popular business, Nina Deli, raised an eyebrow. It showed signs of being in need of a deep scrub. Owner Clinton Fisher said staff would be attacking the dirt after their lunch hour.

One of the most foetid, cramped and soiled kitchens was found at Shanghai in Beacon Bay. Despite a claim by owner Qi Zhou that she kept the “cleanest of all Chinese kitchens in East London”, the toilet off to the side of the kitchen had a tyre against the bowl, the wash-up area looked basic and a small dishwasher lightweight.

Zhou denied BCM claims that they stacked dirty dishes on the floor.

Falati said: “People may be eating at restaurants which are the ‘in thing’, but do not know what is happening in the back.”