Suspected salmonella outbreak declared in Madrid: Two people are hospitalised and 15 others affected after eating contaminated truffle sauce at award-winning burger restaurant

SEVENTEEN people have gone down with food poisoning after eating at two restaurants operated by the ‘gourmet’ Hundred Burgers chain in Madrid.

Two people are in hospital but are ‘doing well’, with health experts analysing whether the poisonings were caused by an outbreak of salmonella.

A government spokesman for the Madrid region said that public health services are investigating the facts and that it could be salmonella linked to ‘contaminated sauces’.

The outbreak appears to have originated from a truffle egg yolk sauce and affected customers who visited the restaurants on Calle Eloy Gonzalo and Plaza de Pedro Zerolo in the capital on Sunday and Monday.

Around 150 people are being checked for being exposed to the product on the two days.

Those affected have presented symptoms such as fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.

“We ordered several hamburgers and at first everything was fine, we didn’t notice any strange tastes or anything, but the next day we started to feel bad,” one of those affected told broadcaster Onda Madrid.

“We had to go to hospital and we were told that it was food poisoning.”

Health inspectors took samples on Thursday of various sauces and other products used in preparing the hamburgers.

Inspectors travelled on Friday to the headquarters of Hundred Burgers in Alcobendas where the sauces were made.

Hundred Burgers was voted the second-best burger restaurant in the world according to the ranking of ‘The World’s 25 Best Burgers’ survey.

The chain was created by two friends, Alex Gonzalez and Ezequiel Maldjian, and has hit the headlines in Spain- especially in Madrid and Valencia- where waiting lists to get a table run for over a month.