In the on-going angst that is restaurant inspection – or just politics – in Louisiana, The Times-Picayune reports Louisiana’s health inspection process for restaurants is far less punitive than that of many other culinary and tourism capitals.

Just eight food outlets in New Orleans have been ordered closed in New Orleans in two years, compared with more than 100 in Sacramento — and more than 1,000 in Los Angeles in just a single year.

The difference seems to be in how each municipality enforces its safety regulations.

In cities like Las Vegas, restaurants are graded on a 100-point scale, with points taken away for each violation. They are then given a corresponding letter grade, an A, B or C, which is posted in the front window of the establishment.

Louisiana takes a different approach. It does not score restaurants on a 100-point scale, post letter grades or demand that all critical violations are fixed in a set period of time. The system depends on the judgment of the local sanitarians to determine whether a temporary closure or monetary penalty is necessary. It rarely happens.

“Some people say that letter grades give the public something that’s easily identifiable, but as our secretary said, ‘If a restaurant is not OK, it’s not going to be open, and if it is OK, it will be open,'” said Tenney Sibley, Louisiana’s chief sanitarian.

I heard that argument a lot in Toronto as it implemented its red-yellow-green system of inspection disclosure. Didn’t work then, doesn’t work now.

Ken Pastorick, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said his department prefers to work with restaurateurs to fix potential problems instead of threatening them with harsh punishments. Tourism is the lifeblood of New Orleans, so it would be counterproductive to shut down a restaurant unless it is absolutely necessary, he said.

Follow the cruise ships: having tourists barf is not good for business.

During the past two years, New Orleans inspectors have closed just eight establishments — five restaurants, two grocery stores and the deli counter in a supermarket — but three of those closures were because of fire damage as opposed to health violations. The remaining five closed because of sewage backup.

Of those eight establishments, five reopened the day after inspectors discovered the violations, and one reopened the same day.

Kenneth Jeffus, the former longtime sanitarian manager for Lafourche Parish, said red tape makes it very hard to close a restaurant in Louisiana. If field inspectors determine an establishment is a public-safety threat, they don’t have the power to shut it down. Instead, they have to slowly work their request up a long chain of command and administrative procedures, which can take between 30 days and a year. In the meantime, the restaurant remains open.

“The process was set up by the Legislature to be cumbersome because they don’t want businesses closed down,” Jeffus said. “The upper level is scared to give any authority to the sanitarians in the field who actually know what’s going on.”

The Office of Public Health, a subset of the state Department of Health and Hospitals, employs eight sanitarians in New Orleans who are tasked with inspecting every food outlet, whether a restaurant, gas station or hospital. They are looking for more than just foreign objects that might have fallen in the bisque. They have a comprehensive list of potential violations, separated into two categories based on the public health threat: critical and non-critical.

Diners can look up their favorite restaurants at NOLA.com and see the most recent inspection reports from January 2008 to September 2012 — as well as which restaurants have drawn the most flags.

As of early October, when The Times-Picayune began investigating the inspection process, some of the biggest names in the local culinary scene had not been inspected once in 2012, including Commander’s Palace, Emeril’s, Delmonico, NOLA,Herbsaint, Arnaud’s, Gautreau’s, Acme Oyster House on Iberville Street and Domenica.

These restaurants, most of which were included in The Times-Picayune’s top 10 restaurants of 2012, were subsequently inspected after the newspaper asked Sibley why the sanitarians had failed to pay them at least one visit, much less the four required. But that still leaves dozens of high-profile restaurants that have yet to be inspected at all, including Brennan’s — even though it chalked up 33 violations in 2011.