Staff at a Gastown restaurant that found itself at the centre of an infamous viral social media post last week say they don't believe a rat could've found its way into their food.
Crab Park Chowdery hit headlines last week after an Instagram video allegedly showed a rat being lifted from a bowl of soup.
As a result, the restaurant's off-site kitchen was shut down and had its working agreement with another Vancouver restaurant severed.
In the video, a woman can be seen calmly lifting the apparent rodent out of the bread bowl on her spoon.
But the scenario has staff suspicious.
"I would freak out, everybody would. But her reaction was very calm," says Maria Bolano, who works at the restaurant. "How can you act so cool when you find that in your soup?"
Staff showed CTV News into the kitchen where the soup is kept and prepared for customers, showing how they don't believe a rodent could've found its way into the bowl of Manhattan chowder.
They also believe they would've seen the rat while serving the customer.
It comes a day after Ashton Phillips, the owner of Crab Park Chowdery, said the incident "doesn't add up."
"For us, we've done the research, we've done our investigations into it and we just don't see how it's possible," he said.
Phillips says the restaurant has done exhaustive tests to see whether they could replicate a rat getting into their food.
He says staff conducted a series of tests, such as the buoyancy of a rat in a bowl of chowder, examining their food storage processes and even comparing the size of the serving spoon in relation to the rat.
While Vancouver Coastal Health shut down the off-site kitchen, Crab Park Chowdery was never shut down by inspectors and has remained open.
With a report from CTV Vancouver's St. John Alexander
