A rat-infested Malaysian restaurant in the heart of an Australian city has been shut down after serving food from a kitchen covered in rodent droppings. 

Joe Wang from Tropical Kingdom, the owner of Clayton’s Sarawak Kitchen in south-east Melbourne, pleaded guilty to a series of major breaches of the Food Act in Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

The court heard the venue was subject to multiple health inspections with officials shocked to find worsening conditions each time, the Herald Sun reported.

Clayton’s Sarawak Kitchen was finally closed by an inspector in December 2022 after finding the kitchen had become overrun by rodents.

The inspector first visited the restaurant on November 2 and recorded 13 breaches, including Sarawak Kitchen’s cold room sitting at 16.3C.

Several high risk foods – including chicken, fish and pork – were stored inside the cold room with a bowl of marinated pork returning a temperature of 14.1C.

Sarawak Kitchen was categorised as a high risk venue with the inspector organising a second visit to ‘assess improvements’ to the food preparation area.

Instead, they twice found operations had continued in the dismal conditions. 

Wang flew to Melbourne from Malaysia for the restaurant’s third inspection. 

At that time, Sarawak Kitchen was only filling takeaway orders and pre-existing catering contracts.

Wang told the inspector he and his brother were planning to sell the business and would stop accepting takeaway orders the following week. 

However, the inspector could not overlook the dire condition of the restaurant’s food preparation area.

Again, the cold room was running at a high and unsafe temperature with a bowl of fried fish stored at 17.1C. 

There were also signs of a ‘significant rodent infestation’, which included droppings found on food preparation surfaces and cooking equipment.

The rat problem had gotten so bad the inspector found several large holes in the walls of the kitchen, created by the pests.

The venue was ordered to close until it fixed the food safety issues. 

During a final inspection of the restaurant on December 22, the inspector found Sarawak Kitchen had closed with no improvement to the conditions. 

Magistrate Angela Bolger on Wednesday said the Malaysian eatery ‘shouldn’t have been allowed to degenerate to the point it had’.

‘These are serious matters – they involve legislative rules to protect the public from harm,’ she said.

‘Falling short of the standards gives rise to risk which could result in a very real harm to the public.’

Tropical Kingdom was fined $45,000 and ordered to pay $14,784.23 in costs to the Monash Council.