Hee Kee Café & Restaurant 囍運來茶餐廳 — Restaurant in Liverpool

• Hee Kee has moved to Renshaw Street*

'Dirty' restaurant where vinegar was used to clean surfaces

The business was slapped with a zero star hygiene rating after an inspection

A Chinese restaurant was handed the worst possible rating for hygiene after inspectors found 'dirty' areas and vinegar being used as a surface cleaner.

Hee Kee Cantonese Restaurant in London Road was inspected on February 17 by a team from Liverpool Council's Environmental Health team. Following the visit the business was slapped with a zero rating for food hygiene, meaning that major improvement is required.

The ECHO used Freedom of Information laws to obtain a copy of the full inspection report and see what concerns were raised by the inspectors following the Hee Kee visit.

In one section of the report, it raised the issue that 'the food surface sanitiser in use was vinegar, which is not compliant.'

Another section added: "It was unclear how long the cooked duck and pork sides are hung before refrigeration. You should aim to refrigerate the meat within 90 minutes of cooking."

The inspectors were also concerned that "floor areas in the kitchen beneath and behind equipment were dirty, with accumulations of fat and food debris".

The report added: "The pavement and road gully area outside the back door was filthy. The gully appeared to be blocked. Blame was placed upon windblown litter, this debris would not accumulate if the area was kept clean and free from pooling water.

"There were accumulations of waste paper, cardboard and waste food behind the chest freezer in the dry good store. This area must not be overlooked during routine cleaning."

Food businesses in Liverpool are routinely inspected by local authority hygiene teams. A health officer will look at three criteria when inspecting a premises. These include how hygienically the food is prepared, cooked, re-heated, cooled and stored, the cleanliness, layout, lighting and ventilation of the building and how the business manages what it does to make sure food is safe.

Each establishment receives their rating following an inspection conducted by a food safety officer from the council. A rating of zero means urgent improvement is necessary, one means major improvement is required while two means improvement is needed. A rating of three means the premises is generally satisfactory, four is good and five...

This is my first time to have dinner at Hee Kee. It is surprisingly good. Their menu has a lot of choices. We ordered a seafood meal for 4-6 people. This meal includes 2 seafood dishes and 4 normal dishes,a total of 6 dishes and only cost us £8x.xx. Rice and soup are self served with unlimited refilled. Each portion is generously large. What’s great about it is that you can eat different variety of food here, such as stirred fried garlic and chilli prawn (tai pai don style), siu mei and Sichuan cuisine, the chefs there must be very professional, I can rarely found a restaurant in hk with many variety of dishes in 1 restaurant. The food is fresh and the portions are tasty and generous. E.g. there are 10pieces of prawn in 1 dish, a large sea bass, big bowl of sichun chilli and spicy belly pork. In general, the food is authentic hk styled flavour, delicious and the quality is very high. A must go restaurant when you visit Liverpool, highly...

We had gone down to order and wait. We was told 30 minutes, we thought ok. We waited 1 hour- we got our food home (10 minute walk) to find we didn’t get 2 of our items so that’s £12 missing. Prawn egg fu yung was just an omelette with prawns no veg at all! Tasted like sugar was in it. So ordering the same on uber eats was £44 we got charged £57. What an absolute waste of money and was vile!!

27/12/23- Ive came to the restaurant for my refund of the 2 items and for the overcharge they did of £10.70 (the difference on ordering onsite & uber eats)

They said my refund was £9.40 and quoted me cheaper prices then uber eats.. i accepted that refund but sadly he had nothing but babbling excuses for overcharging £10.70! So no I’m not taking this review down. Really speaking a full refund would have been most acceptable because the food was vile anyways and most got put in the bin. So no I won’t take this down but...