Some businesses in Portage are temporarily closed Monday because of an odor they say is coming from a local restaurant.
Signs posted in front of stores neighboring Maui Poke read “Sorry, we’re closed today. I’m sure you can smell why.”
They say they noticed a strong odor over the weekend, later determined to be from rotting fish inside Maui Poke.
Days later, they say they’re still cleaning the smell out of their own shops, and they want accountability.
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“They all said it smelled like hot garbage,” Solasta Salon owner, Ashley Whited, said, whose store neighbors Maui Poke.
She told News Channel 3 after noticing a strange smell Friday morning, she tried all day to find the source.
Whited called in a plumber and reached out to her property manager, but finally had to close up Saturday.
“I had staff here that was getting physically ill,” she said. “The restaurant next door had to close down. The smell was horrendous.”
Later that day, she says the owner of Maui Poke and maintenance workers opened the door to find flies and an overwhelming stench.
“It was rotting meat,” she said. “Other perishable items. The meat had exploded in the freezer that went bad.”
Whited hopes to reopen Tuesday after cleaning with supplies out of her own pocket, but reached out to News Channel 3 for answers.
In response to an inquiry, the Kalamazoo County Health Department said a supervisor visited Maui Poke on Monday and didn’t detect any further issues.
We also spoke to Maui Poke owner, Janey Chen, whose business on South Westnedge Avenue closed in January due to staffing issues.
She explains she ordered a bag of crab salad and a box of fish in preparation for reopening on July 8.
She placed them in her freezer, which she says died last week, and cleaned it up when the issue was brought to her attention.
Chen says she entered the restaurant once last week, before the problem with her freezer.
“We did have that freezer issue, I’m not going to lie about that, but that’s been taken care of,” she said.
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She stressed that both the property owner, Plaza Corp, and the health department didn’t notice any further odor.
But what about the complaints from neighboring businesses?
“Why do they have flies? That I don’t know. I can tell you that we don’t,” she said, adding “I would say sorry, if I had known sooner. I would have done it sooner.”
But Whited says that isn’t enough.
She wants action from Plaza Corp, who she claims waited too long to address the problem.
She says her business and others are suffering thousands in losses in closing down all because of spoiled seafood.
“I don’t think that as a business owner myself, that people should be able to get away with negligence,” Whited said. “Especially, when it’s affected other local businesses that have done nothing but help support the other businesses here.”
News Channel 3 also spoke to Plaza Corp, who declined to comment.
Chen said she will return to the restaurant Tuesday morning with the health department to address any further issues.
News Channel 3 searched
publicly available restaurant inspection reports
from Kalamazoo County’s Environmental Health Division for Maui Poke.
The only result shows an inspection from 2019 at its former location on North Drake Road in Kalamazoo, which passed with no violations noted.
