That fancy-pants restaurant in Rotherwick, Hook, Hampshire, recently voted as Britain ‘most perfect town,’ was fined for poisoning guests with chicken liver parfait at a 2010 Christmas party.

Guests at the prestigious Tylney Hall Hotel complained to Hart’s Environmental Health Department in January last year, triggering off a lengthy investigation and resulting in the hotel being prosecuted.

In Aldershot Magistrates’ Court the hotel pleaded guilty to five breaches of food hygiene legislation:

• Two instances of placing unsafe food on the market – namely chicken liver parfait.
• Failing to comply with the requirement to implement and maintain procedures in relation to an identified critical control point, namely cooking.
• Offering for sale cheese after the date shown in its ‘use by’ date
• Failing to ensure that food handlers were supervised, instructed and trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work activity.
• Admitting failing to follow their own exacting standards.

The hotel owners, Tylney Hall Hotel Ltd, which had no previous convictions, was ordered to pay £35,900 in fines and a further £4,000 in costs.

They were told the fines would have been well in excess of £50,000 had they not been given a 33 per cent discount for pleading guilty.