The ones where the food is *really *bad.
I wouldn’t go to somewhere with a C. I don’t care why they got it- nit picky person or otherwise. Fact is, if so many places have As, it can’t be that hard to meet the necessary health standards.
Once, I popped into a new Chinese place on my lunch hour, ordered, then while I was waiting, noticed the B on the door. I was conflicted- I had already ordered and paid! I ended up eating it, but I didn’t enjoy the food because I kept thinking I was going to find a rat head in my chow mein.
But being able to hide crap shows a certain level of competence, no?
I wouldn’t go to a restaurant with a C.
I read the newspaper listings for restaurant inspections and they’ll say stuff like:
Black mold in the ice machines.
Insect carcasses in food prep area.
Open containers in cold storage.
91.5
A-
It’s so rare to see anything below an 85 that a C would scare the bejeesus out of me.
I don’t know, probably. But I have also picked a hair out of a chicken basket at Dairy Queen and continued eating it.
Was it this place?
No, stay out of a C. Not only does it show they don’t have very high standards, it’s shows they don’t give a crap and haven’t bothered to try and fix things.
Any restaurant can have a bad day. But not fixing everything like two seconds after you get your report? Unacceptable.
Ok you got me there! 
Stay far, far away from C. B is noticeably gross, even.
A C might make me pause and re-think my options, but I’d probably still eat there unless my eating partners were squeamish. I wouldn’t care if it was only a B since it seems like most of the small, cheap, ethnic food places usually have a B. My friends and I joke that getting an A might be evidence that the food isn’t authentic enough.
For Los Angeles County, this website has in detail all the violations the restaurant had: http://www.lapublichealth.org/rating/
My worst case of food poisoning occurred after eating at a restaurant that was graded A. I couldn’t keep down any solids other than plain toast for a whole week.
Around here (South Carolina) you can easily search what grades restaurants get. It also shows you if it was a normal routine inspection or a follow-up. Look, if your restaurant can’t get its act together when it knows the inspectors are coming back, I am never eating there again.
That’s kind of insulting, that “small ethnic restaurants” get B grades - it certainly isn’t the case here. Most of the best ethnic restaurants I go to proudly show off their “A”, and some of them have the “Golden Spatula” the local news gives to the highest scoring restaurant.
In Alabama, full inspections are posted, with a 0-100% grade. As I understand it, anything less than 76% earns you a quick repeat inspection. A repeat failure gets your restaurant closed.
One of my favorite local restaurants was shut down a few years ago for sending a lot of people to the hospital. It took awhile, but they reopened. Everyone assumed they would be the cleanest place in town. I was in the next wave of people that got sent to the hospital when they reopened. They were shut down for good after that.
nm
I live in China itself. I’m sure 99% of the stuff I eat is prepared under circumstances that would make a health inspector’s hair fall out. As long as the food is served hot, you’ll almost certainly be okay. I’d eat there.
Indeed.
I wonder what my home kitchen would get? Probably a D, if for nothing else than the mystery left overs currently trying to out evolve me in the fridge.
Restaurants get a “Pass” (green), “Conditonal” {yellow} or “Closed” (red) in Toronto. “Conditional” is when problems were found and they have to fix them. You can look them up on the web.
Marinated by wha?
Found a marijuana roach in chili once…
20 years ago,…
No, the real question is…did you dry out the roach and smoke it? 
I got my worst case of food poisoning from Chipotle, so even highly regimented chains aren’t immune.