The first floor of our apartment has just been converted into a restaurant. They specialize in “Sesame Oil Chicken.”
I should be delighted but I am not.
We live on the 2nd floor and our whole place smells of their cooking. Our laundry smells of chicken. We even smell of chicken no matter how many times we bathe. I check their exhaust fan and it is pointed directly at our house.
Is this right? Shouldn’t the exhaust fan be pointed outwards?
Our landlord said it is to be expected since we live next to a restaurant.
Should I just grin and bear it? or is there an agency that monitors these things?
I doubt you can do anything about it. People in Taiwan are very inconsiderate in regards to stuff like this.
Heck, you can hear my neighbor at 530 am, screaming her lungs out at her dog, little yellow (shao huang) to come back for breakfast, EVERY MORNING, even on saturday and sunday… :shock: Sigh…
If I understand correctly, this happened after you had already moved in. Your landlord seems to just want to avoid any trouble and is givng you the easiest solution for him/her.
We also had a restaurant move in to the first floor of a neighboring building. I’ve often wondered if there were zoning laws or any seperation between living and commercial spaces (I guess they weren’t followed in this case.)
The smell isn’t as bad as the seasame chicken smell the original poster has to put up with (my sympathy goes out to you). Actually, it is more the heat rising up from the kitchen below–it makes one room of our apartment considerably warmer (I know, that’s not a problem now with the cold temps, but in the summer…).
I’ve been meaning to look into this, but is there a board of health in Taipei? A group of restaurant inspectors who enforce sanitation laws? Or someone (or some organization) where we can lodge a formal complaint about the lack of fans or proper ventilation by the restaurant below?
I’d just like to get the ball rolling on this. Up to now, I’ve just let it go, this is Taiwan, learn to live with it, and so on. But now I’d like to try to do something about it.
Finally, do you think it is better to go in and talk to the cafe owner about the problem (I am not a regular at the cafe–in fact, I think that the cafe serves faux-"Western"style food at horribly inflated prices and I have made it a point not to go there)?
Or is better to try to take action (quietly and indirectly) through a government organization (if one exists)?
There must be a way to deal with this. Or are the options really grin and bear it or move?
[quote=“Ayah72”]The first floor of our apartment has just been converted into a restaurant. They specialize in “Sesame Oil Chicken.”
I should be delighted but I am not.
We live on the 2nd floor and our whole place smells of their cooking. Our laundry smells of chicken. We even smell of chicken no matter how many times we bathe. I check their exhaust fan and it is pointed directly at our house.
Is this right? Shouldn’t the exhaust fan be pointed outwards?
[/quote]
where’s outwards? it would seem in this case your apartment
Perhaps they have no idea that you are getting that exhaust or do and feel they should not change it since no one is complaining… ask them to change and put an extractor with some pipe and make sure the pipe is pointing straight up in the air… hot air rises… they should run it up into open space and not as far as the neighbor upstairs who may then be getting the exhaust
If the worse comes to the worse and they are wankers… like my neighbor who burns paper money inside the building and smokes the entire floors upstairs and seems not to give a shit even after me growling at him 3 times… then I would find out if they are registered and if not get them closed down… restaurants ( if they could be classified as being such) are often opened up here without any license initially so as to avoid tax etc… as well as the fact the place could be closed in week if business sucked
“Our landlord said it is to be expected since we live next to a restaurant.”
I’ m surprised he didn’t say it was destiny or ‘fung shwei’ or some other bullshit reasoning like that, so that you just got to ‘accept it’ and not complain or give HIM potential grieve from the neighbors
Could be worse. A chou doufu (stinky tofu) stand opened up next to my wife’s beauty salon. Fortunately they changed to selling betel nuts after a couple of months, so now there’s just lots of taxi drivers hanging out.
I’d suggest contacting the EPA. If you file a complaint that the restaurant is causing a nuisance by generating an unpleasant or noxious stink, then they should send over an inspector to check it out and, if they agree that it reaches an unacceptable level, order the restaurant to remedy the situation or face being fined and possibly closed down.
But your landlord is useless – he should be attending to that for you. Perhaps he will if you let him know you find it so unbearable that you’ll have to start looking for another place to live if nothing can be done about it.
[quote]A group of restaurant inspectors who enforce sanitation laws? [/quote]
Inspector 1: Not enough rats in here.
Owner: We try, but the shop across the street catches them in cages and then lets them loose in their restaurant. We can’t compete!
Inspector 2: Look over here! Look at these cockroaches!
Inspector 1: Great Buddha! Look at the size of those things!
Owner: I’m sorry, I’m sorry!
Inspector 2: I’d say. Those are the smallest, sorriest excuses for cockroaches I think I’ve ever seen.
Owner: Give them time, please!
Inspector 1: The Bureau of Health will have to fine you for these infractions. The fine is NT$25,000.
Owner: Can I pay you directly, say, NT$2,000 each and I’ll promise never to be so lax again.
Inspectors 1 and 2: Mei wen ti.
once people turned the first floor storefront of my mom-in-law’s walkup into a cloth dying factory. the house was often filled with chemical fumes. we contacted the taipei epa and they made them put in ventilation equipment, you should have heard these “neighbors” bitch about it. don’t know if this situation is analagous but it’s worth a shot.
Well, my landlord seems to have talked to them and they installed a kind of silvery tube? pipe? long enough to just rest on top of the wall. It faces outwards but is 3 feet from my laundry area.
My bedroom doesn’t smell that much but the moment I open the laundry area…whew!!!
Can that be called proper ventilation? How far out should the pipe be? The winds here in Muzha are very strong.
I washed my clothes today and will know soon enough if they will smell like Sesame Oil chicken.
My friend suggested blocking the pipe so the smoke will just go back to the restaurant but…
As tempting as this may sound, think carefully before you start this or it might deteriotate into a tit for tat. You block the pipe, then your scooter gets smashed or someone puts glue in your locks or a window gets smashed while you are out.
Just think twice before you do something like that (although it is up to you.)
Perhaps try this option first. Best of luck. I take it you’ll be put off from eating seasame chicken for a good long while.
Have a friend eat there, and claim they got sick. Then have another friend eat there, and claim they got sick. Have them report their “illness” to the authorities. The authorities will usually send someone to check out the sanitary conditions of the restaurant, and more likely than not, there will be violations, and the restaurant will have to shut down while they make changes. The kicker for the restaurant owner is that the authorities will not tell you what is in violation, and what you have to change, so you really don’t know what to do, so your restaurant could be closed for awhile. Stuff that you think is ok, is actually not. I know this because my friend’s restaurant got closed down, and this is exactly what happened. I’ve eaten at my friend’s restaurant many times, and from a Western point of view, it’s not dirty by any means, certainly cleaner than your average restaurant in Taiwan, and as clean as most restaurants in the US. But, compliants got him shut down. And they wouldn’t tell him what to change. Now, when we goto eat, he points out what things could get the particular restaurant we are in closed down. It’s hard to find a restaurant without violations.
Call in media who are friendly to your cause. Media tends to get things done the quickest in Taiwan. No one wants negative publicity, and regardless of who is right or wrong, the public will perceive the restaurant in a negative light after seeing it portrayed that way on TV/newspaper. The owner definitely will not want media showing up.
