So I’m going to pick up some lunch today at the Chinese restaurant nearby. We’ve ate there a couple of times before and it was a’ight.
I’m pulling up and notice the sign in their window with their health department grade.
C.
Ewwww!
I wonder if it’s been that way awhile and I just never noticed before.
I’ve worked in restaurants in my younger days. In general they’re not the cleanest, most pristine places. What do you have to do or not do to get a C?
I threw it in reverse and went to a nearby Natures Foods restaurant, so it worked out.
Would you ever eat at a restaurant that had anything less than an A health grade?
So, you must be in California? That’s the only state I’ve been in that posts health dept ratings.
When I lived in San Diego, my favorite burger joint had a “B” rating. It was a walkup on the beach (PB), next to a bar (Windjammer, I think), with a pass-through and an outside window. I didn’t die. In fact, I never had a GI symptom. Of course, it was usually mixed with a fair amount of alcohol.
I really don’t care that much. I accept that I am exposed to toxic bacteria and the like all the time whether I like it or not. I want to keep my immune system working hard on my behalf so if the falafel is delicious then I will probably shrug and chow away.
I worked at a restaurant before and I can tell you that the only reason restaurants get C’s is because they were caught. A’s are simply better at hiding crap
I think I’d want to know what the problems were - maybe they don’t handle foods right that I never eat. I suppose that brings up the point that a restaurant should be handling ALL foods correctly. I dunno; we out a couple of times every weekend, and I don’t see that stopping, and we never have problems from the food we eat out, so I guess I’m in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” camp.
Where I live, they have the actual worksheet the inspector fills out posted, so you can see where the restaurant went wrong. If it was a lot of little nitpicky things, I wouldn’t worry about it. If it was something big like their refrigerator temperature was too warm, or they stored raw chicken where it could drip on raw veggies, then I wouldn’t eat there.
I realize that there’s a lot you don’t know and a lot you don’t want to know going on in the back rooms of restaurants. I tend to be extra suspicious of Chinese restaurants though. I got food poisoning at one once, and another that was popular among students when I was in college had roaches openly walking around in the dining area. I can just imagine what the kitchen looked like! :eek:
To the best of my knowledge we don’t have grading systems over here, but I simply wouldn’t make any judgement without knowing what the standards meant.
In any case I don’t really trust the health inspectors to have a fucking clue… I suspect this stuff is basically arbitrary and more dependent on luck than anything, at least in-between the “spotless” and “cockroach infested” categories.
Memphis has the inspection posted so you can see why they failed. I go to a Wendy’s that had a C once. The bathroom wasn’t clean. They had a dirty sink. I think they had a (closed) bottle of bleach sitting on the prep area. Stuff like that. The worst are when they store food at improper temperatures.
For a long time we had some guy on the local news reading the names of the worst offenders for the week. I don’t know if he’s still around but I remember at work we’d always discuss if it was a place we regularly went to. I don’t think it ever really STOPPED us from going back though!
We don’t have grades, there is only a ‘health inspection’ page in the newspaper listing restaurants and what was found wrong. Nine out of ten are Chinese buffets. Doesn’t stop me from going there, though, even if I DO get the occasional queasy feeling. I pretend it’s the MSG.
You might find this old thread interesting; one of our members is a health inspector, and confirms the frequency of Oriental restaurants. From the listings around here (there are detailed listings for every inspection in King County, WA), Chinese restaurants seem to get hit often, usually by a combination of:
Temperature control (not keeping things cool enough), usually because they’re “hanging” poultry or leaving things out too long on a buffet. (Not keeping things cool enough is by far the most common item in the listing for all restaurants, though), and
Using the same cutting boards for raw meats and other ingredients. (Cross-contamination).
I’d guess this must be cultural, given that it seems to be so uniform. Perhaps the “stir fry” cooking style, where basically everything is cooked fast and hot, helps mitigate the effects of cross-contamination in food.
The bar I work in just got a C on a health inspection…for the most bizarre and nitpicky things, like a ranch dip one of my co-workers brought in to eat that had expired.
We don’t even serve food; we have fridges for beer and that’s it. Who cares about an employee’s lunch in the fridge? She also gave us demerits for not having a thermometer in that fridge. Cuz the worst thing that can happen to backup 6 packs of random beer is…being served less than ice-cold…?? Or TOO cold?
She did also find a container of half-and-half that was a week out of date; we use it for a couple of drinks but not very often so nobody had checked it. I guess we deserve that. But honestly most of the stuff she marked off for were random and a bit silly.
Then again we don’t serve food; I’d be a little more concerned about a bad health rating in a restaurant vs. a bar. But I’ve worked in lots of restaurants and the health standards are never as high as the consumer probably imagines. If I liked the food at a C-rated restaurant I’d probably ignore it and eat there anyway.