A Vietnamese restaurant in London has been shut down after dog meat was found in the freezer by hygiene inspectors.

Pho Na, on Old Kent Road, Southwark, closed after inspectors found the suspicious looking meat labelled as ‘goat wrapped in leaves’.

When it was sent for analysis, it came back as dog meat.

That wasn’t the only issue at Pho Na; inspectors also discovered mice droppings and cockroaches inside the establishment. And to think – it looks so classy and inviting from the outside:

Any Michelin stars? Dog meat probably tastes like you’re chewing on a Michelin tyre, to be fair.

Owner Vuong Quoc Nguyen, 47, denied multiple food safety and hygiene offences at Bromley Magistrates’ Court this week.  He claims he did not know it was dog meat as it had been supplied to him by someone else.

He also claimed that the meat was never for sale anyway (what was it doing in the freezer?) and that pest control had been hired to deal with the mice and cockroaches. It just so happened the inspectors visited right before the problem was about to be sorted! Talk about bad timing.

I suppose he could have argued that he was going for the authentic Vietnamese street food experience, but that probably wouldn’t hold up in court.

It could be that this dog meat was ordered specifically for a client who wanted it, and wasn’t actually being served to customers at Pho Na, although I doubt that’s any consolation to anyone who has ever eaten there as we’ll never know for sure. What kind of dog meat was it, anyway? XL Bully?

The good news is that the food inspection system has worked as intended here and the matter is being dealt with accordingly. Let’s not forget the major supermarkets in this country fed us horse meat as beef for years also. Yuck…

To watch a tourist get wiped out by a train on Hanoi’s famous Train Street, click HERE. Heads on a swivel.