Canberra restaurants close because of safety breaches
In Canberra, Belconnen eatery Ricardo's Cafe and the Central Cafe in Gungahlin have been forced to shut down because of food safety breaches.
ACT Health has made that clear: the two venues have had prohibition notices slapped on their doors ordering them to cease trading.
Ricardo De Marco, the owner of Ricardo’s Café which was closed on Tuesday afternoon was confident it was just temporary. He was sure it would re-open soon.
He said the kitchen had been stripped and sanitised since it was closed down.
Mr De Marco said health inspectors had found salmonella on a Chux dishcloth and a tea towel after 15 people had become ill at the restaurant in January.
He pointed out however that the health inspectors had not found any salmonella on equipment used to prepare the food related to the outbreak.
ACT Health had shut him down over salmonella poisoning related to his smoothies and cronuts,
"All I know is that it's from smoothies and cronuts and like I said, there's testing on all of them," Mr De Marco told the Canberra Times.
"They came back with the smoothies, so we took it off the menu, and they told us the things we had to change and we did it straight away.
"I've heard stories of people who say they were sick and they didn't know what it was and [ACT Health] asked have you been [to Ricardo's] in the last two weeks and they nailed us on that."
The owner of the Central Café had left a note on their doors telling patrons ACT Health had found their refrigerator "not up to standard". According to the note, new fridges, as well as coolroom and cooking equipment had been ordered a month ago. However, it pointed out that the inspectors had come in to the cafe on February 10 during "record heat of 41 degrees". As a result, it was forced to close.
by Leon Gettler, February 17th 2017
