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Questionable Fish Storage or Crazed Neighbor with Vendetta at Sonia Rose?

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Lower East Side: And for a little Monday Morning Gross-Out, we present the above citizen photojournalism, coming from a resident living behind Sonia Rose, an LES newcomer. There is certainly the chance that the containers of fish on ice located in the restaurant's back alley hold discards, fish that were never intended to go into the dining room. However, that's not the case according to the resident. We'll let her explain:

"WARNING! Beware those that eat at Sonia Rose at 74 Orchard St. I live behind this fairly new restaurant and they keep their fish outside in the back of their building in an open plastic container with no lid. I have witnessed rats eating the fish on a daily basis. It is absolutely the most disgusting sight I have ever seen. The chef comes outside to grab the fish (with his bare hands) cut a sliver off inside and throw the fish back in the open container. It is unbelievable! I'm sure a customer must have gotten food poisoning by now...It's impossible not to know that rats have been eating the fish because I can see that the chunks of fish are missing with teeth marks on it."
The Dept. of Health should probably dispatch in the troops onthedouble.
UPDATE: According to the restaurant's PR, the above pictures were completely staged:
"...all the fish and meats that come into the restaurant come through the front stairs down to the basement. The food is put into the walk in fridge and once the food in is in the walk in, they take what they need and in the downstairs prep room measure, weigh and season each individual portion and wrap it and put it back into the walk in to be used for the rest of night. The only things ever prepared upstairs are sauces, marinades, seasonings, and bread being baked. So there is no way that fish the crazy neighbors staged could have been from Sonia Rose because based on the fact that all raw meets and fish are stored in the walk in and prepped downstairs and only come up to the kitchen when ready for cooking. Plus Sonia Rose is a high end French restaurant they definitely don't we receive their fish in dirty crates from china town which that photo indicates. These neighbors are seriously just at war and told the owners of Sonia Rose two weeks ago that they were going to get them back for taking over their space and whatever else the neighbors find fault with. And so staging this disgusting act and trying to ruin the reputation of Sonia Rose is their attempt at 'getting them back'."

· Gross Out Tuesdays: The Snail from Columbine [~E~]
· Mangia Grasshopper: 'wasn't jumping because his hind legs were, well, eaten' [~E~]