dailyhampshiregazette
News and information for Friday, January 11, 2008
As diners stay away, a struggle: Hunan Gourmet works toward trust
NORTHAMPTON - The owner of Hunan Gourmet says her restaurant is trying to recover after reports of an animal part in a takeout order dealt a devastating blow to the business last month.
In an interview at Hunan Gourmet this week, owner Rachel Wang, who bought the restaurant last summer, said business is down about 70 percent since news came out that a city family had reported finding what several experts say appears to be a rodent limb in a takeout meal delivered to their home.
Several regular clients canceled business - including business banquets - during the holiday season, and the financial fallout has forced Wang to let go two employees in recent weeks, she said. Some regular customers haven't returned.
'This is really hurting us a lot,' said Wang. She said she is perplexed - as are local health officials - as to how the object got into the restaurant's food in the first place. She outlined changes she has made - including changing a supplier - at the King Street restaurant's operations in the wake of the discovery.
Health officials say there's no indication of rodents at the restaurant and give the kitchen staff high marks for sanitary practices and food handling.
Hunan Gourmet's actions are just the kind of thing industry experts say is needed for a business to recover from such a blow. Even so, they say, it would take any establishment quite some time to return to normal after that kind of publicity.
'It's something we have to deal with in this industry, and people who are food handlers have to identify these things,' said Dr. Jerrold Leong, a professor at the School of Restaurant and Hotel Administration at Oklahoma State University. 'The public's trust is there.'
Professor Haemoon Oh, who specializes in customer satisfaction at Iowa State University, said it's important the restaurant find a way to re-establish its credibility with the public. Publishing its inspection and food handling reports is one option, or it may want to show the efforts it has made to track down suppliers to determine whether they could be responsible. Training employees to be diligent in food-handling practices also is critical, he and others interviewed said.
'This is a very unusual incident,' said Oh. 'It may take a bit of time to regain the business.'
Meanwhile, local and state health officials have in recent weeks conducted multiple inspections of the award-winning restaurant, which serves Chinese and Japanese cuisine. They have not been able to link any evidence of rodents to the incident.
'That animal part had to have come from a supplier outside,' said Northampton Health Agent Ernest J. Mathieu, shortly before touring the restaurant's kitchen with a Gazette reporter on Tuesday. The kitchen appeared clean and well organized.
'The sanitary and food-handling practices, from what I've observed, have been very good,' said Sanitary Inspector Richard J. Meczywor, who has been in the restaurant several times to observe kitchen operations in recent weeks.
City resident Victoria Brett reported finding the small, dismembered animal part in a takeout order that had been delivered to their home Dec. 8 in a vegetable moo shu dish. She immediately returned the food to the restaurant.
Hunan Gourmet refunded the family's $51 order and her staff disposed of the limb, according to Wang. As a result, the only evidence health inspectors had to work with in the wake of the incident were digital photos Brett's family had taken of the leg before returning it to the restaurant.
Several animal experts have reviewed the images and determined that it appears to be some type of small mammal. In a Dec. 18 report filed with the city, the state Department of Public Health's Bureau of Laboratory Sciences stated that it could not identify the object with certainty, but that it 'appears to be the front foot and partial leg of an unknown variety of rodent.'
The vegetable moo shu dish at Hunan Gourmet, like most dishes at the restaurant, is prepared to order and composed primarily of fresh-cut vegetables. Cabbage, carrots and snow peas are the main ingredients. Bamboo shoots and dried wood ear mushrooms are also in the dish, but used to a lesser extent.
Thinly sliced bamboo shoots are the only canned vegetable used in the dish, and Wang, as well as others familiar with the dish's preparation, believe this vegetable or perhaps the dark-colored mushrooms, which come in clear packaging, are the most logical sources of the foreign object found in the dish in December.
One measure Wang has taken is to change her bamboo shoots supplier, going to a bigger size 10 can that contains larger bamboo shoots. This means cooks are now cutting the bamboo shoots themselves rather than using the smaller pre-sliced bamboo shoots from the former supplier.
'Assuming that it came from the wood ear (mushrooms) or bamboo shoots, somebody missed it, that's the only conclusion we can come up with,' said Paul Weinberg, a local attorney and regular customer at Hunan Gourmet who knows the restaurant's current and former owners.
Industry experts say there is a strong possibility that a small animal limb could wind up in a canned product shipped from China.
Oh, of Iowa State, said he's seen several legal cases revolving around foreign objects, including small animal parts, found in canned food supplies.
Barring any foul play, 'I think canned goods is the strongest possibility,' Oh said. 'If it happened in processing, it is hard to blame them.'
Mathieu said he's convinced the restaurant was not the source of the animal part. And based on his investigation, he said it's unlikely anyone planted the object in the meal, though he can't rule that out.
He said he found the complainant's story credible after interviews, and the meal in question happened to be delivered by Wang's brother, who is visiting her from China and helping her at the restaurant.
'Which one of these possibilities is the real reason?' said Mathieu. 'I doubt if we'll ever know. It's very unfortunate that this had to happen.'
Meczywor said that while he receives frequent complaints about potential food-borne illnesses at restaurants, he's not been able to link a single episode to a city restaurant in the seven-plus years he's been inspecting them. Nobody became ill from the incident at Hunan Gourmet, though the city's diners have not been immune to bacteria outbreaks in the past.
