Last summer, 13 customers and three members of staff fell ill with salmonella after eating at the Water Margin - two of the victims were children and one was the manager's son.

A catalogue of bad practices in the kitchen led to contaminated cucumber and spring onion being fed to diners, the court was told by the prosecuting solicitor, Tom Spencer.

He said investigators found dried food stuck to the walls, raw meat being prepared alongside cooked produce and food storage temperatures not monitored.

Manager, Jun Yin Li, was ordered to pay nearly £30,000 in fines and costs after pleading guilty at Beverley Magistrates Court on Tuesday to six food hygiene related offences.

The solicitor representing Jun Yin Li, Bill Waddington, said the family-run business expected to suffer considerable financial losses due to the incident.

Mr Spencer, representing the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, told the court advice from food standards officials had been ignored several months prior to the outbreak.

He said: "It was an accident waiting to happen. Bad management was apparent in this establishment. It was not a particularly dirty kitchen, it was just not properly controlled or managed.
"Thirteen customers, two of whom were children, some staff and the manager's son suffered with this.

"They are serious charges because it is salmonella and 20 people were either found to have symptoms of sickness and diarrhoea or tested positive for salmonella."

Jun Yin Li, 47, of Porter Close, Driffield, was ordered to pay fines totalling £15,000 and costs to ERYC, which investigated the case, of £14,000.

The charges included causing an outbreak of food poisoning by serving food injurious to health between May 7 and August 8 last year, failing the criteria of the Public Health Laboratory Service Guidelines 2000, failing to implement food safety procedures and failing to implement corrective actions.

Jun Yin Li, who has worked in the restaurant industry in England for 34 years, also admitted charges that food safety management practices and food preparation areas were not properly maintained.

Similar charges levelled against his wife, Feng Xia Yuan, the legal owner of the restaurant, were formally withdrawn at the hearing. No pleas had been entered by her.

Mr Waddington told magistrates in mitigation that immediate action had been taken at the restaurant when the outbreak was discovered and that Jun Yin Li had been fully compliant throughout the investigation.

"Once the investigation began Mr Li went about changing the practices and was extremely co-operative," he explained. "He wants to apologise to the customers who were unfortunate to suffer the illness as a result of the food they ate at the restaurant."

The presiding magistrate, Mrs Booth, told Jun Yin Li: "These are serious charges with serious consequences.

"You get credit for an early guilty plea and for your full co-operation, but this was an accident waiting to happen. You had previously received advice which you chose not to implement.

"We would have hoped with your long history in restaurants that you would have done that."