Mamie Taylor’s open again after video shows rat served in soup made for Crab Park Chowdery
Posted December 28, 2018 11:43 am.
Last Updated December 29, 2018 1:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A video taken in a Vancouver restaurant is turning stomachs upside down on social media.
The video posted on Instagram shows a rat in soup apparently being served to a customer at Crab Park Chowdery this week. Ashton Phillips, owner of the restaurant, said that it had been brought to his employees’ attention as they saw a young woman taking the video.
Vancouver Coastal Health has rescinded a closure order for Mamie Taylor’s, where the soup was made. Health inspectors have cleared it after conducting an investigation, though food-prep area in the restaurant is still shut down.
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“You can imagine our surprise and our shock was probably just as great as theirs to the fact that there was a rodent in the soup. It’s not something you ever plan to see.” Phillips says. “We’re very, very apologetic, went into complete mode of trying to figure out how exactly that transpired.
“There’s no real room for a rodent to get in to our soups at all. Nothing is ever left open or exposed.”
He says all the food is stored in containers with lids. The soups are prepared in 50-gallon kettles, stored in 20-litre cambro containers, and then lidded before being put into refrigerators, he says.
Now the restaurant is trying to find out how it could have happened, and they even called Vancouver Coastal Health themselves.
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Phillips says he has met with the health authority and discussed their preparation practices. Even so, he says he is still confident their cooking methods have been appropriate.
“Now I’m just at the point of trying to figure out what the next move is,” he says. “It’s just something that you never expect. After two years of building this restaurant and building the brand, trying to offer the best product possible, and create jobs and keep everybody happy, to have something like this occur, it’s just unfortunate.
“It feels like a big slap in the face, because this isn’t who we are or what we represent. We try our hardest to make sure that we are giving people an experience that they’ll enjoy, especially when they’re choosing to spend their hard-earned money with us.”
Making matters worse, he says, is the quick online “smear campaign” now targeting the restaurant.
“People that haven’t dined at the location at all, they’re just seeing this one picture and deciding that they want to take it upon themselves to write bad reviews,” he says.
Soup made at another location
Vancouver Coastal Health inspectors were visiting the restaurant, and have determined it was made at another location, Mamie Taylor’s, at 251 Georgia St.
