So, I know I haven’t been so awesome on the prompt EuroTrip updates. My bad. But I have to interrupt your irregularly scheduled program for the following public service announcement. Dumpling House Restaurant, of 328 Spadina Ave, in Toronto, is now closed. Closed because sometime today, it failed a City of Toronto Public Health Inspection. It failed this inspection miserably - so badly that a Health Hazard Order was involved, and the proprieter was issued a summons. It failed, in short, because of rats:

But wait. It gets worse. You see, today I dined at this fine establishment. Today. Today I had lunch at Dumpling House. The same day that it failed a City of Toronto Public Heath Inspection. The same day that a Health Hazard Order and court summons was issued. The same day that rats were witnessed, scurrying about with their little rat feet over top of the table where delicious dumplings are formed. Delicious rat-contaminated dumplings.

I finished lunch at 1:30pm. The first comment on this blog post that broke the rat story was posted at 4:06 pm. So the shutdown was maybe at 3pm? A scant hour-and-a-half delay, and I might have witnessed the shutdown in action. I might have been sitting there, dumpling in hand*, when a crack team of Public Health Inspection officers came sliding down by rope from the Official Public Health Rapid Response Team helicopter, crashing through the window, while megaphones blared “put down the chopsticks and step away from the pan-fried lamb” **.

Or, perhaps, I simply would have arrived after the shutdown, and missed out on the rat-contaminated dumplings entirely. Of course, then this post would not have been written. And, I would be feeling distinctly less queasy about the whole thing. It’s always a trade-off, I guess.

News travels fast - even the National Post is blogging about the Dumpling House rats. The proprieter of Dumpling House is quoted, stating that it is not Dumpling House in particular that has a rat problem, but the City of Toronto as a whole. Well, clearly, yes, there are many rats in downtown Toronto. But the rats inside the window, contaminating the dumpling preparation area? Definitely a Dumpling House problem.

The worst part is, now the lab has to find a new dumpling place…

* In fact, I do not eat dumplings with my hands. But “dumpling pinched precariously between two chopsticks” wasn’t really working, sentence-wise…

** This is how I imagine a Public Health shutdown happens. The more likely “man-with-clipboard” scenario hardly does the situation justice, in my mind.

Posted February 16th, 2008 at 5:24 am. Filed under rambling.
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