341 Victoria Street and 92 Henkel Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

I've been a little busy these last few days. I've been fine though, just doing fun stuff like maths assignments and turning 20 (anyone want to change my colostomy bag? I'm too old to do it myself). However, if I had lied to you and told you that I had a chronic case of food poisoning after eating food from this place here, would you believe me? I bet you would.

341 Victoria Street in all its derelict glory.

Ok, ok, I know it's closed and it has been for some time. I don't care. I have a funny feeling that it probably looked exactly the same when it was in operation. I wonder why it was closed down?  Now, before you go on with something like "stop stereotyping Chinese takeaways, they're perfectly clean", I might just go on a little tangent to tell you about this place I saw in Sydney's Chinatown back in August 2010. It was a takeaway Chinese place right near the railway station, which I imagine gave it more than its fair share of customers each day. It was pretty damn grubby - I would have never set food inside - but I thought it must be at least acceptable in order to continue operating in such a busy area. How naive of me! I happened to walk past one quiet morning on the way to the train, and witnessed five or six rats come scurrying out from under the door of this place and vanish into the drain. I was honestly almost sick. I guess they would have just been pissed off to lose the best item off their breakfast menu!

So yeah, what I'm trying to get at is that this place probably did close down due to a failed food safety inspection. However, there is still someone who lives in the space above the shop - maybe the ex-owner? This would make sense since I saw him as we walked by, hacking and coughing and spitting off the rooftop. Truly charming!

Hungry? No? What a surprise!

However, at least that place is actually closed down, unlike this. As far as I can see, this one is perfectly functional.

92 Henkel Street (Victoria Street frontage).

Now I don't know about you, but if I was a food wholesaler, I'd kind of like to get some customers every now and then. In order to do that, I'd have an attractive and most importantly CLEAN shop front. This one fails on every account. It looks as if it used to be a mechanic's workshop, and I wouldn't be surprised if the food in here was prepared on old oily benchtops. Organic products? Yeah, probably just the algae they scrape out of the sink every day. I don't know, maybe I'm being too harsh. It might be really nice inside. Maybe. Can you tell I'm not even convincing myself?

Oh, and get a roof. That wouldn't hurt.

Please, if you're starting a business in the food industry, at least paint and clean up your shop! Things can only get better from there. But if you decide not to, just don't come running to me when you get shut down for having sea snails attached to your taps.

Rating: Damnable