As has been widely reported, the Avenue and Lawrence location of Pusateri’s was shut down Thursday due to a pest infestation. The gourmet food store, a mainstay in the area, is expected to reopen pending a follow-up inspection. In the meantime, we have compiled a timeline of how the drama unfolded.
Oct. 20
The Pusateri’s store at Avenue and Lawrence is closed, following an inspection by Toronto Public Health. According to the report, the specific reason for store closure is due to an “operator fail[ing] to prevent an insect infestation.”
When The Star quizzes General Manager John Mastroianni about the incident, he insists Pusetari’s was closed “for general maintenance … equipment maintenance, that kind of thing.” “It’s not rodents.”
Mastroianni eventually comes clean to the newspaper after confirmation about the infestation is made public.
Oct. 20, 6 p.m.
Pusateri’s press release states that as of 3 p.m. that day, the Avenue Road store had been closed. An infestation of pests was found in “a small portion of the storage area and walk-in coolers” as well as “hard-to-reach and obscure locations.” It continues: “none of our public areas have been affected by this incident.”
Oct. 20, late last night
President Frank Luchetta tells a news conference that cockroaches had made their way into the store with a collection of wicker baskets imported from out-of-country.
Oct. 21, 10:40 a.m.
When asked about the likelihood of tainted product being transferred to either of the other two Pusateri’s locations, Shawn Rusich of Butter Communications, Pusateri’s PR company, tells us that no product is ever transferred between stores, saying that the food is brought in separately to each store, and that each store operates independently.
Oct. 21, 11:15 a.m.
A spokesman from DineSafe says that, given the public nature of the incident, the other two stores will be inspected sometime soon as well. “I would anticipate it, because of the publicity, I’m thinking that people will be phoning in and complaining as well.”
In response to the need for destroying any tainted food, the spokesman said it was not an issue in Pusateri’s case.
“Basically, if we condemn food that needs to be seized and destroyed, we would issue a form. We have to be able to prove that food itself has been contaminated,” he said. “In this case we didn’t find any directly chewed food. What we just found was a fair bit of mouse droppings and the signs of a fairly large-scale activity for mice.”