HOUSTON – Several pictures emailed to Channel 2 showing a woman cutting meat on a 2x4 outside a Montgomery County restaurant Monday have led to concerns and questions.
According to the Montgomery Count Health Department, inspectors returned to J.J. China Diner on U.S. 59 near Northpark Drive Tuesday after seeing the photos.
Is this common practice here, and where exactly did this meat wind up? Reporter Keith Garvin and photographer Rolando Hinojosa went inside restaurant to find out.
The on-duty manager actually let us inside the kitchen to show us what he says are the only places the restaurant cuts its meat.
"We never cut stuff outside the door because it's like nasty you know," says manager Jason Zang. "We always cut it at a cleaning station."
Zang says the woman seen in the photo in the back of the restaurant around noon Monday was an out-of-town relative of one of the kitchen workers. He claims the meat belonged to the family and they came to the restaurant to use an instrument to cut it and then take it home. He says the meat never wound up in any of the restaurant's dishes.
"Once it has arrived, the main requirement is that it has to be properly handled, properly prepared, properly stored," Chief of Administration Conrad Janus of the Houston Health Department said.
The diner falls just north of the HHD's jurisdiction, Janus said there are standard in place across the country that regulate where meat comes from and how it is processed.
"That would not be allowed anywhere in the United States," Janus said. "I can't imagine any jurisdiction allowing that. Even using a 2x4 as a cutting surface inside is not allowed. There is specific and limited uses for wood in the establishment. That in itself would be a violation."