Tonight, after a three-hour drive to Wanganui, I grabbed a bite at Subway. As I’ve proudly mentioned before, I was a sandwich artist back in the day, and could probably still make a mean sub. I remember how to cut the bread, fill the toppings tray and bake the cookies. I also remember fearing the local health inspector and the internal Subway inspector.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that chain restaurants have fewer critical violations than small local restaurants.
The newspaper analyzed the data on a city-by-city basis and found that during the past two years, locally owned restaurants collect more critical violations than their chain counterparts.
Critical health code violations pose the greatest risks to public health and include infractions such as storing raw meat over fresh vegetables or storing food at a temperature that promotes bacterial growth. Some restaurants had dozens of critical violations, including buffets, seafood restaurants and drive-ins.
Bryce C. Larsen, director of the Health Department’s Bureau of Food Protection, explained,
"National chains have the financial means and resources to do whatever is needed to address safety issues and employee training.”
Despite the statistics, that doesn’t mean you should avoid every neighborhood diner.
Larsen continued,
"A lot of smaller, family owned restaurants do extremely well [with the health department].”
Diners who want to ensure a Salt Lake County restaurant that they eat at is clean and preparing food properly can turn to restaurant-inspection reports for nearly 3,900 food service facilities on the Salt Lake Valley Health Department website.
And because I was a sandwich artist at the time, here’s a picture of Jared, the Subway guy, and his pants (right).
Perhaps one of the most popular Seinfeld episodes, 
La Bonne Soup Café was shut down Wednesday morning during a routine health inspection after a cockroach infestation was discovered. Previously, the restaurant had been inspected with a clean bill of health.
In one of my favourite 
Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald, said,
One of the factors that make for a successful restaurant inspection grading system is consumer confidence in the system. Do consumers feel the grade accurately represents the risk associated with dining at a particular establishment? If the answer is no, it’s unlikely the system will be used to its full potential. Sure, there will always be consumers that don’t notice (or care) about the inspection grade in an establishment window; but consumers who do care, and want to use the system, should feel it is reliable.
When I first moved to New Zealand and discovered the delicious gold kiwifruit I went a little overboard, consuming at least four of these a day. Little did I know the sweeter sibling of the green kiwifruit may be helping to keep me from, ummm, embarrassing body functions. Kiwi researchers have found that kiwifruit may help flatulence, reports 
Being an avid fan of stalker-esque gossip sites, I was interested to see the popular celebrity eatery Peppone appear in my Google Alerts this morning. The likes of Britney Spears and Mark Wahlberg have dined at the Brentwood, California restaurant, and in the past the A grade at the restaurant didn’t just invite A-list celebrities. 
Julie, my youngest sister, started her first year at Fanshawe College in London (Ontario) this fall. Like many first years she’s staying in residence, and like many first years she’s having a great drunken time – likely followed by painful mornings hovered over the toilet.
Aside from travelling, I don’t carry my Canadian passport with me — the last thing I need is to lose it while overseas. Sure, I understood when the doctor or Liquor King employee asked me to produce it, but not when I was refused a burger for lack of I.D. .jpg)
With publicly available inspection data comes media reporting on dirty diners; and with poor media coverage comes threats, Andrew Gilligan at 
In a move unlikely to better Llay Fish Bar’s reputation, owner Ramazan Aslan insisted his restaurant was not the source of the Wrexham E.coli outbreak which has sickened four, including a three-year old girl, reports 
Karen Morrisroe-Clutton (pictured right) and four-year- old Abigail Hennessey, both from Wrexham, were left seriously ill after eating at the takeaway in August. Abigail recovered several weeks ago, while Mrs Morrisroe-Clutton, 32, remains in intensive care at Wrexham Maelor Hospital. Two other people also fell ill, but did not require hospital treatment.