Earlier this week, a TikTok that captured someone throwing frozen ribs onto the ground behind a restaurant — next to dumpsters and cleaning supplies — went viral.
The comment section quickly blew up as people tried to figure out the restaurant’s location and name, wanting to report the unsanitary practice, but the video’s caption only said it was near San José.
It’s not exactly clear who first confirmed the location of the restaurant, but a Reddit user Thursday, identifying themselves as a “hobbyist geoguesser,” said they were able to match details from the video with Pho Love in Milpitas and reported the eatery to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health.
By the end of the day, the restaurant was temporarily shut down.
After becoming aware of the video captured from outside of Pho Love, officials with Santa Clara County Environment Health, a division of the county’s public health department, visited the restaurant to conduct a full investigation, according to Marilyn Underwood, the county’s director of environmental health.
Health officials not only cited the restaurant for the unsafe handling of frozen ribs that failed to follow proper food safety knowledge, but also other major violations they found, “including a cockroach infestation and a lack of ability to properly sanitize utensils and equipment,” Underwood said in a statement.
Underwood said the restaurant will remain closed “until the operator can correct the major violations and demonstrate acceptable food handling practices.”
Representatives with the restaurant did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times, but a Yelp business owner on the Pho Love account responded to several recent reviews that cited the viral video.
“This employee collaborated with someone else to bring my restaurant down,” the business owner responded on the restaurant’s Yelp page, which otherwise had mostly 5-star reviews. “We never instructed this employee to work this way. We will have the police investigate this matter.”
