I was watching that cable show (Restaurant Impossible)-where that Brit ex-chef goes around fixing failing restaurants. The show I saw concerned a restaurant in Pennsylvania-Italian, family run. The thing that got me-when he inspected the kitchen he actually got sick! (the floor was caked with grease, rotten food, etc.; and the ducts hadn’t been cleaned in years. The food storage area was filthy, with evidence of rodents). It took a five man crew a week to clean the kitchen! Despite the obvious threat to health (who would eat at such place), the attitude of the owners was strange-the owner’s son actually owned a cleaning company…and he didn’t see anything wrong!
My question: what kind of a town board of health inspector would ever allow such a dump to serve food? I have worked in restaurants-and my experience was that the health inspectors were very strict.
Everybody these days is BROKE. Regular inspections can only take place if you’ve got an inspector to do them.
Because of massive cutbacks, what used to be a quarterly or yearly inspection now may occur every five years. And chances are, gossip will let people know when the inspector IS out making rounds!
Some cities have actually filed bankruptcy, and the cities are scrambling to pay for emergency personnel. If the cops and firefighters aren’t getting paid, you can bet that there aren’t any inspectors pulling a paycheck.
~VOW
I have worked in bars and restaurants for fifteen years and I have only seen a health inspector about three times total. They do try to make the rounds, but they are understaffed and, IME, rather lazy. I’ve seen lots of places skate on things that they should’ve gotten demerits for. (Ice buckets on the floor, one inside the other? After being on the floor? have you ever seen a really clean sanitary bar floor? I haven’t.) Salad dressings sitting out with no ice, people grabbing salad/bread/baked potatoes etc. with their hands, no working handwashing sink, etc., etc…
I can easily believe that a kitchen could skate for years with deplorable conditions cuz I have witnessed it.
Damn, our county health department just got around to posting the inspection results online. Used to be that we’d have to call them up, inquire about each place, and so on…Lot’s of work that no one wanted to do. So no one ever knew anything. Probably just how both sides liked it. But with the internetz and all, they figured they couldn’t keep it up for long. I wish Indiana required these places to display their report cards in the entryway, like other states do. That would be plenty helpful. They post a record for every establishment every quarter online here. The worst I saw had roach feces on serving utensils, improper temps, illegal grease dumping, fly infestation, and scores of other problems. Mice feces. Just made you glad you never ate there. And then you see where they gave them 3 weeks to correct–makes you wonder why they didn’t shut them down. The poor people that eat there… And of course, I’m sitting above a many, many block historic district–with many ‘historic’ (hysteric) eateries. The health department doesn’t want to say anything about them–but they fared the worst when the reports came out online. Not only on original violations, but on repeats when the board came back to check up on them. Seems they can’t break their habits. And of course, the board didn’t really want to publish that because of the pressure of the tourism dollars.
Well, as I recall, the NYC BOH used to publish restaurant inspection/violations in the newspapers. This show made me very wary…I like the restaurants that have kitchens visible through big windows…at least you can see the general state of cleanliness there.
It takes a Chef and a kitchen crew that’s serious about food safety to stay on top of these things. I try to run a tight ship, and I take every opportunity to train my crew on the correct way to do things. For a lot of things, laziness and the performance pressures of the business push the low-wage cooks to take shortcuts.
We haven’t seen the health department in 2 years. The rumor I heard is that the county health department is too understaffed to do frequent inspections. However, I have also heard from an inspector that they may soon require an on-staff food safety inspector. I don’t know how that will work, or if it is true, but it could put the burden on the restaurant instead of an understaffed city or county department.
When I worked for a local municipality, the health inspectors were politically appointed. Some cared deeply about their jobs; others took their paycheck and they didn’t do a thing.