For the past couple of years, we keep hear­ing people tell us not to go to a cer­tain eth­nic res­taur­ant because “they were filmed by Tar­get scrap­ing leftover food back into the food to sell” and vari­ous oth­er stor­ies along the same lines. We got an email recently say­ing that someone else had heard the rumours, but had also heard that Tar­get nev­er actu­ally filmed there. So we put on our Ser­i­ous Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ist Hats, and sent out two very easy emails set out on a quest to dis­cov­er the truth. Tar­get wrote us back:

Yes we’ve been get­ting that for years too prob­ably because tar­get was filmed just around the corner at top shelf’s office down there for the first two or three years. Its nev­er been on Tar­get and I have con­firmed this with the own­er. We think that for a cam­era to be in the kit­chen it must have been anoth­er staff mem­ber film­ing. I have no idea if its true or false but again it wasn’t filmed by us and no one in our office ever recalls see­ing it. Urb­an myth?

And just to doublecheck, we emailed an Envir­on­ment­al Health Officer at the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil, in the Build­ing Con­sents and Licens­ing Ser­vices, who told us that this par­tic­u­lar res­taur­ant has a Cer­ti­fic­ate of Regis­tra­tion val­id until July 2011. So can people please stop spread­ing this rumour? It’s ridicu­lous and untrue. If you don’t like the food, don’t eat there, but find anoth­er tar­get for your defam­a­tion.

And no, we’re not going to name the res­taur­ant in ques­tion if you haven’t heard the rumours, because mud clearly sticks regard­less of wheth­er it’s deserved or not.