Finding the sauce of fatal fish dinner [SMH]
IT WAS not the fish of the day that killed the 81-year-old retiree William Hodgins but, just 12 hours after dining with his wife, Audrey, at the upmarket Tables restaurant in Pymble on Friday, January 12 last year, Mr Hodgins was dead.

He had suffered from severe vomiting and diarrhoea within an hour of leaving the Pacific Highway restaurant about 9.30pm to return to the couple's unit in nearby Telegraph Road, Westmead Coroners Court heard yesterday.

An investigation by the NSW Food Authority had discovered the toxic vegetable pathogen Bacillus cereus in an asparagus cream sauce served to him and 14 other customers that night who had ordered the fish of the day, snapper, Inspector Dean Lindley of Hornsby police told the coroner, Jane Culver.

It is alleged the sauce, a sample of which was seized by a Food Authority inspector hours after Mrs Hodgins found her husband dead the next morning, was up to 48 hours old when it was served to him.

Inspector Lindley told the court there was evidence that Mr Hodgins had spent the night vomiting as his wife slept.

Fish of the day sauce a killer [SMH]
A Sydney restaurant served asparagus sauce contaminated with bacteria in January last year, resulting in a man's death, because of slack procedures in its handling of the sauce, a coroner found today.

Jane Culver conducted an inquest into the death of William Hodgkins, 81, who dined at Tables restaurant in Pymble on January 12 last year.

She said the sauce, when analysed, had 9.8 million colony-producing units of the bacterium bacillus cereus per gram.

Food that contains between 100,000 and 100 million units of the bacteria per gram are considered contaminated. Even 10,000 units of the bacteria can produce the toxin that causes stomach poisoning.

Mr Hodgkins, who dined at the restaurant with his wife, ordered the fish of the day, which was laced with the sauce. He became ill minutes after returning home and was found dead on his bathroom floor the next morning.

He suffered a ruptured stomach caused by vomiting.

Ms Culver said the sauce was made at 3pm the day before, on January 11, and refrigerated. It was taken out of the refrigerator on January 12 but not discarded after four hours of use. Four hours is the recommended amount of time for the sauce to be used after being refrigerated, Ms Culver said.

Instead of being thrown out, it was placed in a coolroom so that it could be used for serving meals.

Ms Culver said the container for the sauce had no label showing when it was made or when it should be discarded.

The result was that the sauce was kept at temperatures favourable to the growth of bacteria and at one point was kept at temperatures between 30 and 40 degrees next to a hot kitchen device. All that amounted to "temperature abuse", she said.