Wagyu Emperor, a grilled meat restaurant in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯), is to be fined at least NT$1.44 million (US$44,321) and ordered to suspend business after multiple expired food products were found in its kitchen, the city government said yesterday.
The Taichung City Health Bureau said it discovered the food safety breaches during a search on Sunday, after receiving a tip-off from one of the restaurant’s former employees.
Inspectors found a range of expired products, including four cans of doubanjiang (chili bean sauce), two containers of kombu dashi broth, three jars of concentrated beverage syrups, 11 boxes of miso, 24 boxes of Morioka reimen noodles, and 18 boxes of several cuts of beef, the bureau said.
Photo: CNA
After the search, the restaurant issued a statement saying that the expired food items were being saved for “employee training purposes” and had not been served to customers.
At the time, the health bureau said that it was still investigating the matter, but viewed the restaurant’s claims “with a high level of suspicion.”
Taichung Health Bureau Director Tseng Tzu-chan (曾梓展) yesterday said his agency planned later that day to issue fines for the 12 types of expired food products that were found during the inspection.
Restaurants are typically fined NT$60,000 for each expired food product, or NT$120,000 if the expired products were used knowingly, meaning that in this case, the fine would be “at least NT$1.44 million,” he said.
Wagyu Emperor has also been ordered to suspend business, because it has failed to provide records on product deliveries, inventory and sales, Tseng said, adding that if it was unable to do so by Wednesday, it would face an additional fine of NT$30,000 to NT$3 million.
The former employee who blew the whistle on the restaurant is entitled to a reward of 50 percent of the fine, or NT$720,000, Tseng said.
Wagyu Emperor opened in September last year and touted its use of premium wagyu beef imported directly from Japan.
A two-person set menu at the restaurant costs NT$3,900.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.