TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A steak house in Taichung on Saturday (Feb. 25) shared a video of a patron eating ice cream off a public scoop while serving himself ice cream at the restaurant.

In a video shared by 19House, a young man can be seen standing before a self-service station scooping ice cream onto a cone. As he does, he first takes a bite of the ice cream piled on the cone, then, after scooping more ice cream, he brings both the ice cream and the scoop to his mouth for another bite.

The video’s subtitle reads that the individual belonged to a group of 25 “non-Taiwanese” patrons who “occupied half the restaurant’s seats.” Additionally, the patrons allegedly “made a mess on the table and floor” and “served themselves a bunch of food from the self-service station just to leave on the table untouched.”

According to the restaurant, staff members immediately cleared all utensils at the self-service station and sent them to the kitchen to be washed and disinfected. The restaurant wrote that staff members also tried to communicate with the patrons and, after failing to do so, asked them to leave.

The restaurant apologized to other patrons who dined there on the same day for what it described as an “absurd” incident.

During an interview with CTS News, 19House owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said after the video was uploaded, the Korean patrons saw it and called to ask the restaurant to remove it because they are in Taiwan as a representative of Korea. After the incident, he disposed of the six tubs of ice cream, worth around NT$3,000 (US$97.81) to NT$4,000.

In another post, 19House added that when the Korean patrons called, they refused to apologize or admit the individual’s wrongdoing, insisting that there was an issue with the camera angle of the video. “Even if people from other countries don’t have the habit of using shared utensils, it is not possible for them to eat ice cream off an ice cream scoop directly, right?”