Chinese restaurant in Spain shut down after pigeons served as ‘roast duck’

• A Madrid restaurant was shut down for serving street pigeons as “roast duck”.
• Police found plucked pigeons and illegal meat in a cockroach-infested secret room.
• The owner is being investigated for possible crimes against public health and wild species.

A Chinese restaurant in the Spanish capital city of Madrid has been shut down for serving street pigeons as “roast duck”.

Police raided the Jin Gu restaurant, in the city’s Usera district, late last month, finding a pair of plucked pigeons in a cockroach-infested secret storage room alongside bags of dubious-looking meat and sea creatures protected under Spanish law.

Officers said they believed the birds had been grabbed from the streets and killed in the restaurant kitchen, with the owner, who was arrested, intending to pass them off as the traditional Chinese delicacy.

“It is not illegal to breed pigeons in Spain, but there was no paperwork for these birds or almost any of the meat products in the kitchen, so we are pretty sure they were street pigeons,” a spokesman for Madrid’s local police told The Telegraph.

Police found meat and seafood in a hidden freezer. Photo / Madrid Police

While inspecting a filthy bathroom that was being used as a storeroom, police discovered a wall shelf that slid to one side to reveal a hidden door.

Behind it, they found a cockroach-infested room in which strips of defrosted animal flesh were drying on a plastic clothes horse.

Eight rusted freezers without functioning thermometers were stuffed with bags of meat, fish and seafood that had apparently not been purchased through legal channels, including sea cucumbers that were possibly of a species banned from trade in Spain.

Sacks of bivalve molluscs were also found, which police believed came from Asian wetlands. On the floor were rat traps that had been set with putrid meat.

According to police, the secret store contained “more than a tonne of foodstuffs of untraceable origin”.

Meat was found hanging on drying racks. Photo / Madrid Police

The restaurant, which has been open for more than a decade, has received hundreds of online reviews, some of which were positive.

However, some customer experiences warned of unacceptably low standards, and “strange-tasting” duck.

“Terrible food, in a very bad state. The duck had a taste that was, at best, strange, [and] the kitchen had seemingly not been cleaned for months,” read a review posted in January.

Another said that several family members had been sick after a meal at Jin Gu and that he had contacted the restaurant to complain that it was serving “rotten food”.

The restaurant owner, who has not been named, is being investigated for possible crimes against public health and against wild species.