BANGKOK — A popular barbecue franchise is closing 26 restaurants for two days after using a new type of pan customers said spoiled their food.
Two weeks after Bar B Q Plaza launched its much-hyped “Black Magic” pan, customers complained its magic seemed to be making their soup rusty and black, prompting the company to announce the closure on Sunday.
Since the new type of pan went into use Sept. 22, many customers began posting photos showing blackened soup and rusty pans on social media.
“Look, Black Pan is black – including the soup. Does the color from the pan wash out?” Aubeve Amatathongchai wrote on Facebook, adding that she asked the waiter at Central Rama 9 branch to change the pan twice but the soup was still black.
“Oh, do you miss the old pan so much that you transformed yourself back into the golden pan? … At some branches, the new pans have already gone rusty,” user Tita Peerawat Kitti wrote on the page.
Bar B Q Plaza published a statement on Sunday that it has taken all the comments into consideration and was trying to solve the problems.
The statement said the soup was blackened because the pans were washed improperly. As a result, a soy-based oil used on the cast iron pans degraded.
”The black color doesn’t come from the peeling of the pan and is not a dangerous chemical,” the statement read. It blamed the rust on employees not drying them correctly.
The company also said this type of pan is widely used around the world and has been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The company said it would use the two days to retrain staff. They will reopen in Bangkok on Oct. 5 and outside of Bangkok on Oct. 7.