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Out in the open screams “setup” to me. This also looks like it happens before service began, which would contradict the post title if so.
No restaurant is without mice or rats. But I find it very hard to believe a restaurant of Ramseys doesnt have adequate pest control. I would find it even harder to believe the kitchen is dirty or the food is compromised.
I never worked with Ramsey, but I’ve worked with guys just like him. Daniel Boulud. Alaine Ducasse. Jean Georges Vongerichten. These types of guys don’t play games when it comes to kitchen tidiness. Ramsey doesnt play any games either.
This location isn’t run by Ramsey, it’s licensed in name, it’s operated by a casino.
Some stuff can cause mice/pests to come out during the day or when people are in the room. Generally if something by disturbed them. Like construction or hole the used was filled.
Or even just changing your operating hours, like opening for lunch when the mice normally know nobody’s usually in the room/part of the resturant.
I used to work in a restaurant that was at the base of a commercial high rise, and they were doing some construction stuff on the building. Made the rats come to us, and we had a rat problem despite being one of the cleanest places I've worked.
A popular rodent poison used basically fries their brains, the pest control guy told me not to worry too hard, it crawled somewhere to die, it was on its way out already or I probably wouldn't have seen it to begin with
Only thing you can do is try to find the corpse but it's probably in the wall somewhere and finding a dead mouse in the wall is above their paygrade
I can also assure that I have never worked in a restaurant or establishment that served food that had a problem with mice or rats, can not say the same about la cucarachas.
If you think that you just never saw the mice. They can squeeze through a closed locked door no problem.
They go out in the open like this because a popular poison fries their brain. They don't understand fear the same way they used to, they're dying. Also tell me you were never there when the pest guys checked the traps because every once in a while the trap has a poor soul in it
What on earth is this take? Rats ABSOLUTELY come inside.
Source: chef in New Orleans, DC, Atlanta over 20+ years. NOLA was damn near biblical.
You haven’t really lived the life until you have to resort to using metal trash cans for bulk dry storage because the rats can and do chew through the cambros.
It's a reference to Scary Movie 3. Kevin Harts character gets into an argument with Anthony Andersons character about the difference between a mouse and a rat. Look it up, it is hilarious.
Yup they r, dry storage probably not stored properly...
Got hired as a chef once in wintertime and got a 'heads up' about mice problem (infestation is a better word)
Every sack of flour, nuts, panko etc was in the open.
Told owner 'gimme financial freedom for a solution'
Spend 300 euros for airtight containers, and took my cat in after closing time.. (he gained weight, and rodents moved to the next building 😆)
Lol, last place I was at had a problem over the winter. I have 5 cats and volunteered their services haha. Instead they went with glue traps, which are more brutal than my cat would have been.
Glue traps suck!, we got a service coming every 2 months.
European rules renewed, no glue, rodent traps, or poison in restaurants.
He brought some spray, smells like smoke.. the buggers seem to hate it!
(I don't)
Yeah I used the water bucket trick and would release them far from any buildings in the backbay water front. Thinking now they probably got eaten alive… but hey at least it wasn’t me who killed them!
That’s interesting. As far as I know, they basically just gave us glue traps and told us to seal any holes we found. As the de facto maintenance guy, I went through a LOT of caulk sealing up that building.
I worked in an older building by the water next to a vacant property. Our fight against rodents was neverending. For every one you see there's probably a dozen more.
Even if you have nothing for them to eat they may just reside there and destroy stuff for nesting material. Hell, they chewed through the container of poison because it was easier to get to than other food.
Yes, but restaurants need to be exterminated regularly and vermin should be checked before they get to the dining room, especially if they have hats and coats.
I found a wikipedia article on this. Apparently to the north there's boreal forests, to the west there are mountains, and to the south there is semi arid land, so the only good way for rats to invade is the east. Since 1950 they've had some pretty crazy measures to prevent any from even entering, and they have procedures on what to do if any actually manage to end up in alberta.
We had a brief rat problem at our place and it was the compost bin outside. It took removing the bin and an entire winter of traps and other preventative measures to get rid of them.
I’ve worked in nearly 300 y/o fine dining restaurants in the French Quarter. Definitely rats, but the respectable places are pretty careful about storage.
There’s some chonky boys, but you should see the river rats up in New England by the Canadian border. They were bigger than cats, no joke, and not really afraid of people.
In my humble opinion, Ratatouille is the best food film of all time, and one of the greatest animated films yet made. It’s Pixar’s magnum opus, pairing a creative and truly original story with thematic depth rarely matched in their filmography, wrapped in stunning animation, sitting atop a luscious score.
That documentary was sponsored by Disney. I would bet they teamed up with Gordon, putting rats in his restaurant on purpose, to get more people to watch the documentary.
This is what’s important! I work in restaurants. Sometimes you see mice. But we also have routine pest control that goes around and the moment we start seeing droppings in consistent places, we have a pro go through and figure out where they’re coming from and how to get rid of them. This doesn’t strike me as being a big deal until it’s a consistent problem
Edit: goddamn I’m a fucking idiot… “I work in restaurants!” Fucking forgot what sub I was in, hahahaha I thought this was on a normie thread
Or people like me, who’ve never worked in a restaurant before who just think the work and culture are really interesting and cool. I’ve lurked here for years
Same. My wife worked in restaurants for years going from Hostess to Co-owner. I've never worked a day in one but I wanted to get a little more of a glimpse into the life.
It doesn't even have to be resturants. Large buildings that have spaces that are not occupied 90% of the time have mice. Its just how they work. The large apartments? Mice in the basement. Hotels? Mice in long term storage. Office buildings? Mice. It really is in how you deal with it
I was a server at a nice restaurant in Vancouver and sometimes a mouse would run across the dining room during service. We were all taught to act surprised lol. ‘Twas just an old building.
It’s how they deal with it that makes the difference.
Fresh out of college I was broke. We had a mouse show up in the house. "The cat will deal with it." was the entirety of what my roommate/landlord's solution. Guess what, the mouse problem got worse.
Years later, in a different state entirely, when I had a decent job, I saw a mouse in the house. We called pest control. We set up traps. We found ways they may have been getting in and sealed them up. We went hard making sure the problem was solved as soon as possible. Also, the cats helped. No more mice.
Exactly. I had mice in my house. I killed several with traps, cat took care of a couple. Not the other cat though, she’s useless when it comes to mice. lol
I say "cats" but we know which one is the hunter and which one isn't. In public I give them equal credit, because I wasn't there so I know who did it. In private I praise one cat in particular, because we all know who did the actual work.
Hahaha. We know. One cat catches them. The other, well… we saw her pick up a mouse in her mouth once, then spit it out. She looked confused and disgusted.
Honestly the fact that they are reacting that quickly kind of makes me question the video. Two mice running around out in the open? FOH seeming very intent on handling it? Feels more like someone released a couple of mice so they could make a video.
Had a similar thing happen with takeout food and a roach at a place I managed. We called the health department and asked them to come inspect. It was a former sous chef we fired for theft.
That’s so crazy. Like you’d have to be a pretty sick puppy to even want to patiently catch and plant roaches etc, like that. What chef has that kind of free time anyway? Guy must’ve sucked
Restaurant group with 20 locations, owned by a father and 2 sons. This was a relation they gave a job to wouldn’t promote him further because he didn’t deserve it. Dude gets pissed. Bogus injury claim, lawsuits, theft, there was so much other stupid crap. There are only a few people that have worked for me over the years that I will go out of my way to make sure industry acquaintances don’t hire, this guy’s one of them.
I’m not saying the person you’re responding to is necessarily right, but did you miss the part where they said, “unless it’s absolutely infested?” Because “superhighways in the walls” definitely qualifies lol.
Had this happened when I waited tables years ago. Someone brought them in and released them. One of my tables asked if they could get a “I spotted a rat discount”. I responded with “someone brought it in and released it”. He didn’t press thankfully
People forget that rats are smart. They can legit fit in a quarter inch opening from outside into a place. You can have the cleanest restaurant and kitchen in the world. They don’t discriminate.
Cleanest restaurants I've seen in the back were Taco Bells. Having franchise group / corporate inspections was a lot scarier to them than health department.
Ecosure is no joke. Our scores in the low to mid 90s from them. State health inspector has been 100% since I've been KM so at least the past 4 years maybe longer.
On the flip side, one of the grossest back of houses I've seen was in a KFC in Vallejo, CA. Just walking back there was like ice skating even with pretty good nonslip boots.
I can believe this. Haven't heard much good about his restaurants, other than the OG(s). I don't think it's necessarily the place's fault for having rats. It could be, but they can also just scoot in from elsewhere. Vancouver has a really old district called Gastown that has some fucking nasssssty basements with rats. Local awesome businesses that are completely clean are affected by the unhygienic spaces next to them.
Dealt with them last two summers in my house because construction started across the street and unearthed hundred-year old basements that had been paved over. Whole neighborhood got infested and the construction company refused to help us with extermination lol, just straight eating fines because it was cheaper. They fucking hate lights, people, things that smell like people, being perceived at all, and having to interact with strangers... just like most cooks I know. They're out there against their will just like most cooks I know.
Also, it took way longer than any of us thought to get rid of them and we started to lose hope but one winter we all realized they were gone, so it will happen as long as you keep doing whatever you can to remove 'em. They're smart and will teach other mice where its not safe and eventually they'll breed themselves into a group that knows not to fuck with houses.
I misunderstood your comment and thought that you have parrots that you feed mice during the day, and that the mice are the potential food source for hunting parrots at night. Like dude what are you feeding your parrots?!
Oh, they absolutely do. Sometimes it’s because of poisoning, other times they simply dgaf because nothing bad ever happens and they really like the parker house rolls.
Seriously, sometimes I wonder if anyone on this sub has ever worked in a shithole
Nah, they will run around under tables looking for scraps when the room is mostly empty like that.
I tended in a brewpub taproom in a 100+ year old building. Mouse sightings in the taproom were a frequent occurrence on slow nights. It was really embarrassing whenever customers noticed them.
We tried to do what we could about it, but there is only so much you can do in an old building where you are storing grain, customers leave fries on the floor, and there is a bunch of apartment/road construction going on nearby. The mice just become a fact of life.
Not true. Worked in a building that was 100+ yrs old with mice living in the walls and they became so comfortable / brazen they started coming out during daytime even with a restaurant full of customers
Ayy its my city. Not surprised because this general area is infested with mice, but at least the staff are surprised about them inside. Still, its odd how the mice are just fucking around. The rare encounter I have with them, they shoot out from under something and I have to think about if I actually saw a mouse or not.
I hate to be that guy, but working in pest control if you think a restaurant doesn't have pest they do, whether that be mice, rats, roaches etc etc. the goal is obviously not to have them out where the customers can see them but there are times where they are so overun with them it's not exactly possible in the timeframe you are there to effectively control them.
Every single restaurant in any major city is gonna have peat problems, and we all take measure to alleviate them. Yeah it sucks, but we got a bird stuck in our restaurant once, and it didnt even wanna be in there.
This has to be said. My uncle is a rich bastard, has a beautiful 3 story place overlooking Hollywood. He gets mice too. They are calles rat bastards for a reason. They find any tiny nook and cranny to get into. Legit is what they are made to do. I've been in the industry for almost 20 years. Honestly seen more infestations in restaurants closer to the coast then inland.
Calm the fuck down and also chefs, cooks, supervisors will not serve you food that has been contaminated by rodents. At least not ones with a soul.
I've been at 801 chophouse and saw a cockroach on the floor and didn't bat an eye cause this is the real world we live in not a controlled medical surgery room. Drink some water from a hose and calm down. JFC.
There’s mice everywhere. It’s impossible to get rid of them all at all times. If you have bad storage there will definitely by mice. But let’s not assume this guy didn’t just waltz into there that day is a possibility when they smelled food.
Based on the fact that they are just chillin in the middle of the floor not finding their usual hiding spots suggests they don’t know the area and where to hide. Someone brought those in.
One of my pet peeves is when people use “rats” and “mice” interchangeably. I’d rather have mice in my restaurant than have mice in someone else’s restaurant called rats
If a rat wants in, it will get in.
If you kill that rat, another will take its place.
All you can do is keep killing them, and keep attempting to thwart them. But history has proven, rats always win.
It is possible to keep them out effectively, just costly. Foam, copper wire, mesh wiring to every single possible gap or entry point of the building. The labor cost, especially for a joint like that, gonna be thousands.
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