A HOTPOT restaurant in Luohu District had reused red oil that had already been served to hotpot customers, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.
A newspaper reporter disguised herself as a waitress looking for a job at the hotpot restaurant on Guiyuan Road. She worked there for a week to see whether the oil was being reused.
The undercover reporter saw staff filtering the oil to remove food such as frog and vegetable remains after customers finished their meals. Soup and oil was then stored in an aluminum container which was placed between two rubbish bins in the 20-square-meter kitchen. The surface of the container was dirty and hadn’t been washed for quite some time.
A waiter surnamed Zhou said the soup and oil would be separated and they would reuse the red oil when spicy hotpot was ordered.
“The red oil is so expensive that we reuse it. The frog hotpot isn’t tasty without the red oil,” a dish washer said.
The soup was drained through a tap at the bottom of the container leaving the oil.
When customers ordered spicy hotpot, staff would ladle the oil directly from the container without processing or high-temperature sterilization. After adding ingredients and water, the dish was served to customers.
The restaurant manager, surnamed Sun, denied reusing red oil after the reporter quit and confronted him as a reporter. “The restaurant never reuses the red oil. We use more than two bottles of salad oil a day and how can we reuse red oil? All the soup and red oil are thrown into rubbish bins and the restaurant threw out four to five jars a day,” Sun claimed.
(Cai Yingbo)