It's a Chinese restaurant known for its amazing lunch deals. But business diners aren't the only ones enjoying the grub. ABC2 News Investigator Joce Sterman shows us what else is creeping in for the cheap eats at this Columbia restaurant.
Hunan Manor sits tucked away in the woods of Howard County. It can be easy to miss because it’s off the beaten path in Columbia. But it wasn't hard to find the pest problems that pop up all over this restaurant's inspection reports. We found them going neighborhood by neighborhood; looking at places with the biggest number of violations and the consistent patterns we've seen in reports dating back to 2006.
According to years worth of paperwork, mice and roaches are regular customers. Citations involving those pests showed up in 11 different inspections in the last three years. They've been spotted under the cook line, left their mark by tainting bags of sugar and have even taken several trips inside the storage unit that holds the fried noodles.
Still, management at Hunan Manor thinks they've finally got the problem under control, correcting violations in their most recent inspection last December. Manager Hong Tan says, "To me, I think our restaurant is pretty good because they (pest control services) come every week. Sometimes they find one or two roaches but not like the past two years."
When we visited the restaurant, Tan showed us their pest control log from the last few weeks, saying exterminators come every Wednesday. That log showed that both roaches and mice were spotted during recent treatments over the last few weeks. Tan says they clean every night, but often battle the pests because the age of this building makes it hard to seal all the cracks they use to access their kitchen. He tells ABC2, "This old building is the cause of the problems. It's almost 30 years old."
It’s an aging Chinese restaurant that’s still attracting big crowds, and as we saw, leaving the door wide open for guests on two legs or four. Still, despite problems, Hunan Manor has not been closed down by the Health Department since 2006.
