A French Quarter restaurant temporarily closed its doors after video surfaced on social media, showing a pack of rats rummaging through the New Orleans eatery after hours.
A passer-by noticed the rats inside the French Market Restaurant and Bar, pulled out his cellphone and started shooting through a window.
The video shows about a half dozen large rodents scurrying across overturned bar stools and plates on to an area where oysters are served.
Visitors had this reaction to the size of the rats.
"Those are more like Chihuahuas than rats," one visitor said. "They're huge."
"That looks like a cat,' another visitor said. "It's bigger than a cat."
The video was originally posted to Facebook, Sunday afternoon.
"You never know what's going on in a restaurant, unless you saw one of those big ole boogers run across the floor," one visitor said.
Another tourist told WWL-TV, "That's disgusting. I can't believe it. We'll cross this place off our list. Definitely."
It appears the rats got into the restaurant through a pair of broken windows and some holes in front of the business in the 1000 block of Decatur Street.
Restaurant owner Anthony Marullo said, "The restaurant has been closed since this incident to make any needed repairs to the front of the building and I can assure you that our food service areas are 100 percent clean and safe at all times. Our customer's health and safety are our priority."
Marullo added, "The problem isn't about how to deal with (rats) in our restaurant, it is how to deal with them in the French Quarter and the entire city. This is a problem every business near the Mississippi River fights daily and we spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to combat the problem."
Mayor LaToya Cantrell's press secretary LaTonya Norton released the following statement about the rat problem:
"The City's Department of Mosquito, Termite and Pest Control received the video this morning. A rodent specialist immediately went to the restaurant to inspect. The Louisiana Department of Health was contacted for further investigation and inspection."
