According to DNA Info, Bronxite Tamika Jones recently took a video of a pair of the creatures clinging tenaciously to a metal gate inside of a Chinese restaurant in The Bronx while her godfather valiantly tries (and eventually succeeds at) chasing the creatures away with a broom.
An “A” grade from the Health Department is posted right next to the gate that the raccoons tried to claim as their own territory.
The viral video, credited to Jukin Media, has already been viewed more than 2 million times and shared more than 57,000 times on Facebook.
Models posing as customers for a TV documentary were given “golden tables” in three top restaurants.
But those considered less attractive were seated at the back near kitchens or toilets.
And two restaurateurs admitted it was common practice. TV chef Simon Rimmer owns Greens in Manchester and Earle in Cheshire (both in the UK).
He said: “Every restaurant has a golden table where they sit the best looking customers. A restaurant’s clientele give off a certain message about the place.
“Good looking customers attract more people and make you more cash so you sit them where they can be seen.”
Faith-based food safety has run its course. I’d be more interested in the bugs being served rather than where I was seated.
Neil Elkes of The Birmingham Mail writes that all restaurants, take aways, pubs and cafes should be forced by law to display their food hygiene ratings according to Birmingham’s licensing chief.
And if you don’t like it, the ghost of my great-great-great grandfather, William Perry, also known as the Tipton Slasher, will come and fight for mandatory display, just like he fought on the canals outside Birmingham for passage.
Currently food outlets can choose whether or not to display their ratings to customer and generally only those with four or five stars do.
But Barbara Dring, chairman of the council’s licensing and public protection committee, is urging the Government to make it compulsory for food sellers to display their rating.
She believes that by forcing venue to highlight their ratings will encourage the minority who are unsafe to raise their game.
The ratings of every outlet serving prepared food can be found on the Food Standards Agency website and last autumn they revealed that 127 places had been rated zero – the lowest score available meaning they are often filthy, have pest infestations or unsafe food.
Those venues are often closed and can only re-open once cleared by council inspectors. Repeat offenders are prosecuted .
Coun Dring (Lab, Oscott) said: “There are more than 7,500 food businesses in Birmingham and we want to them not only to be compliant with food law, but we want to encourage them to be better.
“One way to do this would be if it were a legal requirement to display their food business rating on their front door as they do in Wales.
“Currently the Food Standards Agency’s scores on the doors system is voluntary – there’s no incentive or compulsion for premises rated 0 or 1 to display their latest rating, so I want to see the Government make this a legal requirement for all food businesses.”
Two texts. That’s all it takes to avoid potential stomach pains in Evanston, Ill.
Or at least, that was the goal behind an endeavor that pairs the city’s restaurant inspection scores on Yelp with text message alerts for diners. When the SMS program launched early in 2015 it was a quiet release. In fact, Erika Storlie, Evanston’s deputy manager, described the undertaking as more of a four-month side project than anything else.
The city had just completed a project with Yelp to feed restaurant inspection scores to the review site and wanted to investigate joining the scores with its 311 non-emergency texting app. The problem was, Evanston’s 311 app required a person on the other end to retrieve or record data and submit replies.
“So then, that began the exploration of, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if we could text the restaurant name to 311 and automatically get the inspection score back?’” Storlie said. “It kind of came from the fact we were using these two different types of technologies and we wanted to marry them.”
Whether it’s Evanston’s Kafein coffee house on Chicago Avenue or the Peckish Pig on Howard Street, finding scores is simple. Diners just text “food” to the city’s 311 number, and after a prompt, enter a restaurant name and they’re returned the recent score and inspection date.
It’s simple and much easier than Yelp’s mobile app, which compels users to tap and swipe their way to a restaurant’s “More Info” tab and deep dive through a list of miscellaneous information.
Since Yelp and the texting services launched, Evanston officials said there’s an interest in tracking how public scoring influences health inspections.
Line coolers at Mimi’s Cafe in Buford were not working properly during a recent routine inspection, and the air temperature along hazardous food products were too warm.
The Gwinnett County health inspector said a line drawer cooler across from the grill had a temperature of 48.9 degrees, and the cooler under the grill measured 54 degrees. A Mimi’s manager had already notified the corporate office about the coolers.
The restaurant staff had to toss out several food products such as tuna, sausage, cheese, ham, salmon, lettuce, chicken, meatloaf and au jus for the French dip beef sandwiches.
The inspector also noted built-in thermometers in the line coolers were not working, and no other thermometers were placed inside the coolers to measure air temperature.
An employee cracked eggs into a pan then handled peppers and onions inside a cooler without changing gloves and washing hands.
Food was stored under a condensation leak in the freezer, and boxes and plastic containers had ice buildup. The open food packages were discarded.
The game commission is investigating, according to PennLive.
A confidential tip led to the investigation, a commission spokesman told PennLive. Travis Lau said game animals for consumption must be farm-raised and game shot by hunters cannot be sold.
New China’s owner told PennLive that he doesn’t sell deer meat and that deer bones confiscated were for soup for him and his wife.
The deer parts violation was one of 18 violations documented on a Dec. 16 inspection, according to the agriculture department’s report. A follow-up inspection Dec. 17 documented 14 violations, including an unidentifiable pig organ, which the operator’s wife said was her lunch. It was discarded.
I’ve always thought eastern Ontario was a bit slow on the pick-up, but almost 15 years after Toronto introduced its red-yellow-green system of inspection disclosure, Cornwall, Ontario is following suit.
The system will require restaurant owners to hang a sign in their premises which alerts diners to whether or not they have met safe food-handling requirements, among other issues.
To increase the visibility of inspection reports, the EOHU has started distributing coloured signs to restaurants for public display.
The coloured signs indicate at a glance whether a restaurant or grocery store has received a “pass” (green sign), “conditional pass” (yellow sign) or “closed” (red sign) inspection report.
The new signage system is being rolled out starting with premises that prepare, process or handle food, and will progressively expand to all food premises, including grocery stores.
The tamales sold at the restaurant were first purchased from someone who makes them in their home, and they do not have a permit to make and sell them commercially, said a Gwinnett County health inspector.
The inspector had the tamales removed and said they could no longer be offered to diners at Poblanos.
Poblanos Mexican Grill scored 67/U on the routine inspection. Previous scores were 88/B and 85/B.
Last week it was a raccoon at a Tim Hortons in Toronto.
