A restaurant owner says he has been left bewildered after a woman walked in to use the bathroom – and then ‘left with his £150 sink in her bag’.
Robert Melman, owner of Jardim Rodizo in Altrincham, told the Manchester Evening News he is still in disbelief following the incident on Thursday evening (February 20).
Following a routine inspection of the bathroom, he and staff discovered the sink and some pipework had mysteriously gone missing. When staff later reviewed CCTV, the owner says they saw a woman walk into the restaurant and head straight to the toilet.
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Yet, instead of leaving the toilet in the condition she found it, Mr Mellman believes she managed to stuff his expensive £150 bowl into her bag and make her escape undetected.
In footage recorded in the dining area, the woman can be seen walking in with a handbag that appears empty. But time-stamped footage appears to show her leaving moments later with something inside.
This, he and staff have concluded, is their missing sink.
The Brazilian restaurant has separate bathrooms for men and woman, and each cubicle features a toilet and sink behind the locking door. Mr Melman, who founded the popular Fazenda restaurant in Manchester in 2014, said he could do nothing but laugh after what he found on the CCTV footage.
“I’ve seen a lot of things, but never something like this,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “We have toilets in the restaurants, men’s and women’s are separate.
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“But each individual cubicle has a nice sink to was hands in.
“They’re not very expensive but they’re imitation stone. On Thursday, we noticed one was missing completely.
“We went to the CCTV cameras, we don’t have them in the toilets but in the corridors leading to the toilets. You can see a lady coming into the restaurant just to use the toilet – it’s not clear if someone front of house let her do that.
“But she has a small black bag with her. She goes into the toilets, and 11 or 12 minutes later she goes out and we can see the bag is now full of something.”
Mr Melman, 72, believes her bag was ‘full of the sink’ and she then left Jardim at around 8.17pm that evening. He added that it is ‘not difficult to unplug the plastic pipework around the sinks.
“I’ve had people steal lots of things over the years,” continued the owner, who has had a string of restaurants and cafes over the years. “Bottles of wine and things like that, but never something like this. This is quite unusual.
“I couldn’t believe it. All we could do was laugh. It cost me around £150, it’s not terrible, what can you do?”
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