Restaurant fined after serving bug-infested lettuce

A Chinese restaurant owner who dished up a prawn cocktail containing insects has been fined £650.

Philip Lau admitted that he hadn’t washed the lettuce he used as the base for his seafood starter.

Lau (65) claimed that he had bought the salad leaves from a major retailer and believed they would be clean.

He told Livingston Sheriff Court that he would normally wash lettuce he bought from a wholesaler.

He was charged after a shocked couple found insects in their meal order from the Mei Hua Platform restaurant at West Calder railway station.

They called West Lothian Council’s environmental health department and reported their unsavoury discovery.

Inspectors visited the restaurant, and Lau showed them the lettuce he had used – still infested with bugs.

He was later charged with breaching food safety and food hygiene laws on March 27 this year.

Lau appeared for sentence last Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to serving food was “not of the quality demanded by the purchaser”.

He also admitted failing to maintain a suitable decontamination process which he is supposed to follow under a food safety management system system called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP).

Sheriff Douglas Kinloch said he would have imposed a fine of £1000 but discounted the amount to £650 because Lau had admitted his guilt at an early stage in the proceedings and allowed him three months to pay the fine.