Chinese Restaurant in Madrid Shut Down After Being Found Selling Street Pigeons as Roast Duck

It seems a Chinese restaurant in Madrid, Spain, named Jin Gu has found itself in serious hot water after authorities uncovered some rather disturbing goings-on.

On 25th March, local police paid a visit to the place, located in the Usera district — and what they found was enough to shut it down straightaway, according to Mail Online.

Picture this: instead of seeing neatly prepped ingredients in the kitchen, officers reportedly stumbled upon strips of meat — looking worse for wear — hanging on clothes horses to dry. There was also a bag filled with meat described as filthy, and, shockingly, a few bowls holding cooked, plucked street pigeons. Apparently, the restaurant was trying to pass these off as roast duck to unsuspecting diners.

And it didn’t stop there. Reports from local news said the restaurant had eight freezers, all in an awful state — rusty, falling apart, and crammed with bags of meat and other food that had no labels or dates on them. To make matters worse, cockroaches were said to be crawling all over the kitchen, with rat traps lying around on the floor.

Hygiene seemed to be an afterthought. The place didn’t have thermometers to keep an eye on storage temperatures, and much of the cookware was rusty and clearly unhygienic.

On top of all that, police also found the restaurant had some illegal items, including sea cucumbers — a protected species under strict marine conservation laws.

And just when it seemed the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre, officers discovered a hidden storage room tucked away behind a shelf in the disabled toilet. That room wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the restaurant’s business licence.

As a result of all this, Jin Gu has been ordered to shut its doors, and the owner is now under investigation for public health offences — which, frankly, seems more than justified given everything that was found.