A rat-infested Malaysian restaurant in the heart of an Australian city has been shut down after serving food in a kitchen covered in rodent droppings.
Tropical Kingdom’s Joe Wang, owner of Clayton’s Sarawak Kitchen in Melbourne’s south-east, pleaded guilty to a series of significant Food Act breaches in Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.
The court heard the site was subject to multiple health inspections and officials were shocked to find conditions getting worse each time, the court heard. Herald of the sun reported.
An inspector finally closed Clayton’s kitchen in Sarawak in December 2022 after discovering that the kitchen had been overrun by rodents.
The inspector first visited the restaurant on Nov 2 and recorded 13 violations, including Sarawak Kitchen’s cold room at 16.3C.
Various high-risk foods, including chicken, fish and pork, were stored inside the cold room with a plate of pork marinated at a temperature of 14.1°C.
Sarawak Kitchen was categorized as a high-risk location and the inspector arranged a second visit to “assess improvements” in the food preparation area.
Instead, they twice discovered that operations had continued in appalling conditions.
Clayton’s Sarawak Kitchen (pictured) in Melbourne’s south-east was closed in December 2022 after inspectors found its kitchen was suffering from a rat infestation.
Wang flew to Melbourne from Malaysia for the restaurant’s third inspection.
At the time, Sarawak Kitchen was only serving takeaway orders and pre-existing catering contracts.
Wang told the inspector that he and his brother planned to sell the business and would stop accepting takeout orders next week.
However, the inspector could not ignore the terrible state of the restaurant’s food preparation area.
Once again, the cold room was operating at an unsafely high temperature with a plate of fried fish stored at 17.1°C.
There were also signs of a “significant rodent infestation,” including droppings found on food preparation surfaces and kitchen equipment.
The rat problem had gotten so bad that the inspector found several large holes in the kitchen walls, created by the pests.
The site was ordered closed until food safety issues were resolved.
During a final inspection of the restaurant on December 22, the inspector found that Sarawak Kitchen had closed without improving conditions.
There were signs of a “significant rodent infestation” in the restaurant, including droppings found on food preparation surfaces and kitchen equipment (file image)
Magistrate Angela Bolger said Wednesday that the Malaysian restaurant “should not have been allowed to degenerate to the point that it did.”
“These are serious issues: they involve legislative standards to protect the public from harm,” he said.
“Failure to follow the rules creates risks that could cause very real harm to the public.”
Tropical Kingdom was fined $45,000 and ordered to pay $14,784.23 in costs to Monash Council.