A Chinese restaurant in Madrid has been ordered shut by the municipal police after they discovered 300 kg of rotten food, meat hanging out to dry on a clothesline, cockroaches, rat traps, and street pigeons being served as ‘Peking Duck’ at the premises.
The restaurant – Jin Gu, located on the Calle Perpetua Díaz in the Usera district of the city – was investigated after a number of customers had left reviews saying that they felt ill after eating there. However, local reports also state that the restaurant had a number of positive reviews on sites like TripAdvisor (‘It’s like eating in China’, one said).
The patrons had no idea that the ‘Peking Duck’ was actually dead pigeons from the street – highly dangerous due to the diseases they can carry – and that the illegal sea cucumbers were cooked alongside roaming cockroaches and rat traps baited with rotting meat, according to reports.
Police officers from the district’s central police station entered the restaurant at round 1pm on 25 March. Inside, they found the business owner and two customers.
‘Deafening music blasted from speakers with no acoustic controls’, according to the police report. ‘Hallways were crammed with stored items, and emergency exits were sealed shut with bolts. Officers from the Citizen Services Unit found another exit that was completely blocked by two large trash bins.’
The worst part, however, was the kitchen. According to sources close to the case, officers found ‘layers of greasy grime on the floors and tiles; rusty pans stored on the ground; and a conventional oven set up outside the reach of the extractor hood’. See TeleMadrid video report below.
In the disabled-access restroom, a shelf filled with decorative items turned out to be a sliding panel hiding an illegal storage room that wasn’t listed in the restaurant’s operating licence.
Inside, the inspectors discovered eight chest freezers filled with unlabelled meat and fish – ‘with no tracking information or control dates’. There were no thermometers to monitor the temperature, and ‘some lids were off their hinges, with rust clearly visible’.
The meat bags had ‘a suspicious amber hue and there were frozen black Chinese chickens without labels’. One of the most shocking discoveries was strips of meat hanging from a clothesline ‘like socks drying in the sun, dripping grease onto cardboard on the floor’. Right below were rat traps baited with rotting meat.
In the kitchen, officers found domestic pigeons, ‘184 duck gummies, 183 packages of Chinese food dyes and additives, and bags of dried herbs, possibly for infusions’.
Authorities have now closed the establishment, and the owner is being investigated for crimes against public health, wildlife and consumer rights. According to Spanish media, it is believed employees of the restaurant allegedly hunted pigeons in the street and kicked them to death, before plucking them and offering them up as the classic ‘Peking Duck’ dish.
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