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Buffet worker stomps garlic with boots       Send a link to a friend

[September 12, 2007]  NANUET, N.Y. (AP) -- Stomping on garlic with your shoes on is apparently not the correct way to prepare takeout food. The Rockland County Department of Health hit the Great China Buffet restaurant with two violations after a patron took pictures of an employee who was wearing boots while stomping on a huge bowl of garlic in the alley outside.

Health inspectors went to the Chinese restaurant after an employee at a nearby store, Dan Barreto, alerted them to the unsanitary act, which he had recorded on his cell phone.

"I go back there, and the guy's stepping on garlic," said Barreto, who used to eat at the restaurant. "There he was just jumping up and down on it, smashing it up, having a good time."

The health department does not consider a person's shoe or boot a proper instrument to use in food preparation, senior public health sanitarian John Stoughton said Tuesday.

"It was a novel way to prepare food," he said.

Great China Buffet owner Jiang Shu said the worker caught in the pictures had been fired. He said that's not the way his restaurant cooks its chicken with broccoli in garlic sauce and other dishes.

The health department said it would inspect the restaurant again.

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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