Charred Chilli Dip Causes Terror Alert In London

[goldfish]

Sarah Knapton

Wednesday October 3, 2007

The Guardian

When a noxious cloud sent shoppers running in panic on the streets of London, emergency services feared the capital was under chemical attack.

Wearing specialist breathing equipment, fire crews sealed off the area in Soho on Monday afternoon and began a three-hour hunt to find the source of the eye-watering stench while a hazardous area response team stood by, fearing the worst.

Three streets were closed and people evacuated from the area as the search was carried out. After locating the source at about 7pm, emergency crews smashed their way into the Thai Cottage restaurant in D'Arblay Street only to emerge with a 9lb pot of smouldering dried chillies.

Baffled chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon, who had been cooking a spicy dip, was amazed to find himself at the centre of the terror scare.

"We only cook it once a year - it's a spicy dip with extra hot chillies that are deliberately burned," he said.

"To us it smells like burned chilli and it is slightly unusual. I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was but it doesn't smell like chemicals. I'm a bit confused."

Staff at the restaurant had already been evacuated by the time the dip was discovered. Supranee Yodmuang, a Thai Cottage waitress said: "The first we knew about it was at about 4.30 in the afternoon when the fire brigade came. They led us out to where the streets had been cordoned off and we waited there for about three hours.

"They said there was a chemical smell and I remember saying to someone that maybe the smell was the chillies but then we said that was not possible.

"When we came back at 7.30pm we saw the door had been smashed and there were fire brigade and police waiting outside. I was a bit scared but they were very nice about it."

The spicy dip, which is a speciality at the restaurant, is made from charred chillies, garlic flakes, dried shrimps, palm sugar, shrimp paste, tamarind and vegetable oil.

The restaurant, which has been open for 17 years, is considering putting up posters to warn the public during future chilli cooking sessions.

[Ricardo]

Hot News indeed !

[zzdocxx]

Wow!

[TEFLMike]

If the Brit Emergency Services were over here, they would be on constant alert!

[Scott]

Finally, someone I agree with. That stuff does smell like it could snuff the life out of a city!

[antsinmypantsouch]

funny! Thai chili as the next weapon of choice?

[bina]

we warn our close neighbors too when we do the chilly burning thing cause all of them including my daughter react very badly to the burning chilis ; we also do it once in a few months and our dogs get tied up outside also as they start sneezing and coughing!!!!!

bina

[brahmburgers]

ha ha chuckle chortle. however, on the other side of the coin; it's better to be overly safe than too slack.

It brings to mind, during the anthrax scare in The U.S. that took place after 9-11 - there was a copy-cat prankster who mailed some white powder to a government office in Bangkok. It looked suspicious, but after awhile, the prankster called in to reveal it was a hoax (ha ha chuckle chortle), and all quickly became 'mai pen rai'

If I had been in charge of security for the gov't buidling where the package arrived, I would have prosecuted the prankster for something (I don't know names of formal charges in Thailand) ....maybe; 'endangering the public.'

It's 'the boy who cried wolf' sort of thing. Next time there's a suspicious smell in a London dept store, the authorities might not react - worrying perhaps that they'll be ridiculed again for a false alarm - whereas it could wind up being something serious.

A bit different, but in Soeul Korea a few years back, there were some odd cracking sounds in a stout pillar in the middle of an upper level department store. Lots of shoppers, some of whom might have stopped to wonder what those strange creaking sounds were. Any complaint would have subjected them to either a "don't worry about it, it's nothing." or perhaps ridicule. A few minutes later the entire building collapsed and dozens killed.