Diners in a popular tourist spot in Madrid were left vomiting after discovering the ‘roast duck’ they thought they were consuming was actually the roasted carcass of a pigeon caught from the street, according to international media reports last week.
The Chinese restaurant Jin Gu serving the bird has since been forced to close down following serious hygiene and food safety concerns.
Police believe that the pigeon was taken off the street, killed, and then served to customers.
A spokesman for the Madrid authorities told the Telegraph, “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.”
The restaurant's other hygiene concerns
Pigeon was not the only vermin at the restaurant, as officers reported the kitchen had a number of cockroaches and rats.
Footage released by the police in the Usera district revealed strips of miscellaneous meat hanging from a clothes hanger in the restaurant, much of it discolored.
Officers who attended the restaurant after receiving a number of complaints from disgruntled customers also found over 300kg of rotten meat.
One of the officers, who took part in the raid, said, "Everything smelled of rotten seafood; it was almost unbearable."
One nearby resident told El Mundo: "None of us ate there. It smelled bad, and we saw food brought in on a cart and left at the door in broad daylight."
Beyond concern for customer welfare, police reportedly found animals that are listed as a protected species.