QUEENSWAY July 28: A restaurant owner has been criticised for an appalling catalogue of offences after health inspectors saw a mouse jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce in the kitchen.

Inspectors visiting the Kam Tong, Hung Tao and Kiasu restaurants in Queensway, Bayswater, west London, found mouse droppings all over the kitchens and cockroach eggs in the dim sum and baskets of prawn crackers.

One rodent was photographed scampering along a kitchen drainpipe in the Kam Tong restaurant after jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce which was about to be served to customers.

Owner Ronald Lim, of Barnet, north London, admitted 17 counts of breaching food hygiene regulations at Southwark Crown Court on Monday.

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC ordered him to pay fines totalling 30,000 pounds, plus 18,131 pounds costs, and handed him an eight-month jail term suspended for two years.

He was told that if he did not pay the fine, he would face 18 months in jail, a spokeswoman for Westminster City Council said.

The three restaurants were shut down between May and August 2008 but have since reopened. Lim now has three months to prove he has improved standards before a decision is made on whether to ban him from operating a catering business altogether.

Brian Connell, Westminster City Council's cabinet member for business, enterprise and skills, said: "This is an appalling catalogue of offences and gives an otherwise good industry a bad name.

"This person was not running these restaurants to the levels of hygiene which are required and which customers rightly expect."