An award-winning restaurant whose “toxic sauce” allegedly killed a man was yesterday accused of lying over an eleventh-hour claim that staff ate the same food without harm. After a year and a half without mentioning it, the manager of North Shore Tables Restaurant told an inquest yesterday that staff ate the same asparagus sauce believed to have killed William Hodgins in January of 2007. Greg Harris said he failed to mention this to his bosses and police until recently because he and his colleagues ate the sauce with chicken schnitzel—not the fish of the day like Hodgins. “For some reason I did not connect the meal we had with the meal the gentleman ate,” Mr Harris told North Sydney Local Court. “We didn’t eat the same meal that evening. The staff meal doesn’t usually relate to fish in any way.” He added under oath that no staff—who ate the sauce several hours after Hodgins—had reported being ill. But counsel assisting the inquest Paul Bertram said: “You are in fact lying to this inquest to assist Tables Restaurant’s position.” Mr Harris replied: “That is untrue.” Closing the hearing, with Mr Hodgins’ widow Audrey and other family members present, their lawyer James Duncan blamed Tables for a “horrible, painful and in some respects undignified death”. Mr Hodgins, 81, died of gastric rupture in the early hours of the morning after dining at the Pymble restaurant. Tests of the sauce he ate, described by coroner Jane Culver as “toxic”, returned high levels of deadly bacteria bacillus cerus. She reserved her judgment until Monday. The Daily Telegraph, June 28.
Jun 30
