CUSTOMERS who returned to Albury’s The Burger Bar yesterday, on the outlet’s first day of trading after a salmonella outbreak, said they had no concerns about its food and the eatery had their full support.
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The Dean Street restaurant opened at 11am after the lifting of a prohibition order from the NSW Food Authority after 11 days.
Ninety salmonella cases have so far been confirmed among The Burger Bar customers, with investigators finding a batch of raw egg aioli, a garlic mayonnaise, as the source of the outbreak.
Katherine Taylor was the first customer through the door about 11.25am, buying a thickshake.
The Albury Blood Donor Centre employee, who had regularly bought The Burger Bar food along with her colleagues before the closure, said the outlet would retain their support.
“They’re a lovely and clean business; we’ve got no hesitation going back,” Mrs Taylor said.
Steve Fuller bought take-away burgers for himself and two accountancy firm colleagues for lunch, saying The Burger Bar owners Adrian Whitehead and Karen Davis had his sympathy.
“It’s something that could happen to anyone — it’s just unfortunate that it’s happened to them,” he said.
“I saw that it was open and ... we decided that we’d come down and support them on the first day.”
Wangaratta woman Toni, who did not want to give her surname, tried the store-bought aoili The Burger Bar introduced in the wake of the outbreak in lieu of its homemade mayonnaise.
“You could taste that it was store-bought but it was still nice,” she said.
Toni said she had forgotten about the eatery’s outbreak and had asked a staff member why the media were outside.
“She was very honest about what the media were doing and why they closed down,” she said.
“They weren’t trying to hide anything.”
Greater Southern Area Health Service’s Tracey Oakman said in addition to the 90 confirmed cases of salmonella, the service had spoken to another 72 Burger Bar diners who had fallen sick, making for a total of 162 suspected cases.
The public health unit director said there would normally be an average of 20 salmonella cases on the Border in a year, with most of them being generated at home through poor food handling.
A NSW Food Authority spokeswoman said investigators were “satisfied that the premises meets food safety requirements”.
It is not yet known whether The Burger Bar will face a penalty over the outbreak.