Rat's jaw earns £5,000 fine

A LONDON restaurant which allowed part of a rat's jawbone to slip into a customer's noodle and vegetable dish was last week fined £5,000 at Bow Street Magistrates' Court.

Magistrate Peter Badge accepted the rat had been dead for many years and had "at no time been scuttling around" the restaurant, but decided the owners had "not proved that all necessary precautions and due diligence were taken".

The Luong family, owners of the Vietnamese Restaurant in Soho's Wardour Street, had denied serving food unfit for human consumption, claiming the item in question was a blackened mushroom.

The customer, Daniel Clapton, whosegirlfriend had bitten into the foreignbody, commented at the time of the incident that he had "never seen a mushroom with teeth before".