An inspection report for the Vancouver kitchen at the centre of a viral “rat soup” video says the facility was riddled with health code violations, including a “thick accumulation of rodent excrement.”
It further found that all soups prepared in the facility were “unfit for human consumption.”
The details are relayed in a review conducted by a Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) inspector after the video, which depicts a customer lifting what appears to be a partially cooked rat out of a bread bowl of Manhattan clam chowder at the Crab Park Chowdery, was posted to Instagram in December.
READ MORE: Vancouver Coastal Health looking into video of rat allegedly found in bowl of chowder at restaurant
Inspectors descended on the Chowdery’s off-site commissary, leased in the basement of Mamie Taylor’s restaurant, on Dec. 28.
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The report found the kitchen had no hand-washing sink and no fume hood canopy and that one of its prep tables was situated directly underneath a sewer line.
“The fixtures in the washroom were not in operating condition. Walls were largely unfinished. Staff were busy removing the splattered food debris from the side of the walk-in cooler” when VCH staff arrived, wrote inspector Karen Rehbein.
“General sanitation was poor. A cockroach was sighted running over [Chowdery owner Donald] Phillips’ head. Mouse droppings were noted inside the walk-in cooler as well as in the food preparation and food storage areas.”
READ MORE: ‘A good possibility’ rat in soup video is authentic, says forensic video expert
The report found seven distinct health code violations at the facility, including failing to ensure that food was handled in a sanitary manner and not subject to contamination, failing to ensure that potentially contaminated food was not offered for sale and failing to ensure that food was cooled and refrigerated in a safe way.
The report also noted that soups kept in the commissary’s walk-in cooler were not properly covered.
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Following the inspection, both the commissary and Mamie Taylor’s restaurant, which operated separately upstairs, were ordered closed.
Mamie Taylor’s reopened the following day after a follow-up inspection, and owner Ron Oliver ended his relationship with the Chowdery and permanently closed the commissary space.
At the time, Oliver said it’s “hard for me to believe” the rat contamination could have happened on his property but stopped short of questioning the story of the women who claimed to have found the rat.
“It’s nice to feel like I’ve been vindicated; it wasn’t us that was the problem, but at the same time, yesterday was a very difficult day,” Oliver said in December.
Phillips, the Crab Park Chowdery owner, told Global News he didn’t actually see the rat himself as it was thrown out by staff.
However, he insisted it was impossible for the incident to have happened and went as far as filming a step-by-step video with media to demonstrate how soup was served, which he said proved a rat couldn’t have ended up in a bowl.
“We honestly think that maybe it was just to generate Instagram followers and generate that social media buzz that everybody is so out to get these days,” Phillips told Global News in January.
Phillips permanently closed the Crab Park Chowdery in January.
—With files from Srushti Gangdev
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