Kitchen worker at NY restaurant caught stomping garlic in work boots

NANUET, N.Y. -- Stomping on garlic with your shoes on is apparently not the correct way to prepare food.

The Rockland County health department hit the Great China Buffet restaurant with two violations after someone took pictures of an employee stomping on a bowl of garlic with his boots in an alley. The man alerted health inspectors.

"I go back there, and the guy's stepping on garlic," said Dan Barreto, who used to eat at the restaurant. "There he was just jumping up and down on it, smashing it up, having a good time."

The health department does not consider a person's shoe or boot a proper instrument to use in food preparation, senior public health sanitarian John Stoughton said Tuesday.

"It was a novel way to prepare food," he acknowledged.

Great China Buffet owner Jiang Shu said the worker has been fired over the incident.

The health department said it would inspect the restaurant again.