A restaurant owner has been fined £10,000 and forced to shut down his business over the ‘grim state of his kitchen’ at West African eatery Lagos Island in Leyton, east London.

When questioned by inspectors, Gaby Kolajo claimed mouldy chicken found in his mouse-and-cockroach-infested chicken was a traditional specialty Nigerian dish of boiled crab. Thankfully the inspectors were on their A game that day and didn’t buy that for a second.

It comes after Waltham Forest council ordered Mr Kolajo to shut his business in August 2018 because they found rodents and insects all over the dirty kitchen.

Despite being ordered to shut his doors to the public while he improved Lagos Island’s hygiene, he was caught hosting a birthday party on September 1. Whoops!

Again, he tried to lie and claimed the hygiene emergency prohibition order was for a different restaurant, but they weren’t buying that either.

As per Metro, Mr Kolajo was charged with failing to keep his restaurant clean, not controlling pests, serving customers while there were known health risks and breaching the legal order to close his business.

Stratford Magistrates’ Court found him guilty of all four offences last month, after the pandemic delayed his hearing several times.

Lagos Island was inspected again in July 2020 when it was given a food hygiene rating of zero – meaning it requires urgent improvement. Funnily enough the place looked to have decent reviews before this news started doing the rounds and a bunch of people started review-bombing:

Talk about kicking a man when he’s down!

Meanwhile, Councillor Clyde Loakes said:

The magistrate clearly saw through Kolajo’s claims and used their full powers as a warning that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

The state of the kitchens was bad enough but the owner decided to ignore the environmental health officer and the court to continue serving customers putting their health at serious risk.

As a local authority we have limited powers in what we can do to a business – even one that so egregiously ignores orders.

But you can rest assured that we will use all the powers available to us to take action against the minority of food business operators who do not take their responsibilities seriously like Mr Kolajo.

If only Gordon Ramsay could have shown up to give him a bollocking on Kitchen Nightmares, Lagos Island would have got a free makeover and loads of publicity and all this drama would have been avoided. I mean imagine a restaurant owner trying to tell Gordon Ramsay that his mouldy chicken is actually Nigerian crab meat? That’s a ratings winner right there. Unfortunately for Gaby Kolajo, Waltham City council turned up instead and shut him down completely. You live and you learn.

For the man who won $5.5m after suing a restaurant that served him too much booze, click HERE. Result!