Evan and Jerry head out for a bite and get an unexpected surprise.
Tagline sucks, but this advert which first appeared in April and found by Gonzalo last week, is a decent summary of all the toys out there to rate restaurants and their availability — in cars.
Daughter Courtlynn loves her some Subway.
She’ll be pleased to know there’s one at the end of our street, open for brekkie at 7 a.m., and usually occupied by several high school students when I take Sorenne to school at 7:50 a.m.
And it’s the same kids, every day.
It’s convenient and while I do most of the cooking, sometimes life gets in the way and Sorenne and I will pop in for a whole wheat sandwich on our way home. In New York City, Subway has the dubious 
title of franchise most often closed by health types.
The New York Daily News analyzed Health Department data and found Subway stores were shut down a whopping 55 times in the last five years.
Subway officials insist the majority of its 372 city restaurants live up to its “eat fresh” slogan.
“Nearly 90% of the locations have an ‘A’ rating, and some 30 locations have not received their ratings yet,” said company spokesman Les Winograd. “Violations are not tolerated.”
Despite the 55 Subway shutdowns, City Health Department spokeswoman Chanel Caraway was quick to note that “an individual restaurant’s inspection history does not reflect a chain’s performance.”
Kennedy Fried Chicken franchises came in second with 31 closures, Dunkin’ Donuts had 23, Crown Fried Chicken was third with 22 and Golden Krust rounded out the infamous top five with 20.
I’m all for restaurant inspection disclosure but all against bogus evidence to win rhetorical points in the public arena.
The night before a hearing on the public display of letter grades, New York City mayor Michael “Lenny” Bloomberg told collected journos that salmonella is down more than 13 percent over the first full year of restaurant inspection disclosure because of improved food sanitary practices by restaurants striving to achieve better grades.
The mayor — speaking with the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, and Deputy Mayor Linda I. Gibbs — announced that “New Yorkers overwhelmingly support the grading system,” citing 
a recent survey by Baruch College at the City University of New York. It showed that 91 percent of New Yorkers approve of restaurant grading and 88 percent consider letter grades when dining, according to a telephone survey conducted in January and February.
Surveys don’t mean much.
Dr. Farley said salmonella infections were significantly reduced in New York City, but remained unchanged in the rest of New York State, Connecticut and New Jersey.
He added that the city’s restaurants had made significant improvements in sanitary practices, since more than 72 percent of them earned A grades, up from 65 percent a year ago.
The same compliance results have been seen around North America and elsewhere in the 13 years I’ve been involved and long before that; it’s cute that NYC is catching up.
Mr. Bloomberg said, “Restaurant grades have been good for public health and good for the economy,” adding that “New York City is known for its great restaurants and now it will be known for food safety, too.”
Hang on there, Lenny. There’s lots of caveats with inspection and disclosure. The available evidence – which is extensively documented on barfblog.com but even I’m getting tired of writing 
about it – is a draw at best. Links to reductions in foodborne illness are speculation, bordering on false-hope.
Disclosure is good. Leave the self–aggrandizement and rhetoric to pro athletes and lawyers.
The mayor also announced a new free mobile app for iPhones, IPads and IPod Touch devices called “ABCEatsNYC,” which lets New Yorkers check letter grades from any street corner in the five boroughs. The app is listed under the title “NYC Restaurant Grading” at the iPhone App Store, and can be downloaded after searching for mobile devices.
Michael J. Fox is a great Canadian.
The New York City Council will announce Wednesday that nearly 1,000 restaurant operators have responded, after only two weeks, to a Web survey seeking their views about the city health department’s new letter-grading system for food safety.
As of Tuesday, 965 responses had been submitted — a sign “that we’ve hit a nerve,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. “We’re getting surveys from every borough, and from very diverse neighborhoods.”
Opinions expressed in the responses will be revealed in Council hearings scheduled for late February or early March. Responding to what the speaker said was “a wave of complaints” about .jpg)
letter grading, the Council posted a questionnaire on its Web site (www.council.nyc.gov) asking the city’s 24,000 restaurateurs to share information about their experiences with inspectors and administrative tribunals, and the cost of fines and inspection consultants.
Susan Craig, a department spokeswoman, said a survey last summer showed that 90 percent of New Yorkers approved of letter grading, and questioned the methodology and the validity of the Council questionnaire, which asks for but does not require the names of respondents. “The survey has no method of confirming that a participant is actually a restaurant, nor does it ensure that an entrant fills out only one submission,” Ms. Craig said. “The results — good or bad — will have negligible value.”
But Zoe Tobin, a Council spokeswoman, responded that “there is a vetting system in place” that checks for duplication and fraud. “We felt that anonymity was important to encourage candid responses,” she said.
A survey response rate of 4.2 per cent sorta sucks and isn’t representative of much.
The UK Food Standards Agency’s latest public attitudes tracker shows that the main food safety issue people continue to be concerned about is food hygiene when eating out. Other issues include food poisoning and the use of additives in food.
The Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Food Hygiene Information scheme in Scotland, aim to reduce these concerns by encouraging businesses to improve hygiene standards and reduce the incidence of foodborne illness. The schemes help 
consumers choose where to eat out or shop for food by giving them information about the hygiene standards in restaurants, cafés, takeaways, hotels and food shops.
In this latest tracker survey, three new questions were asked to measure people’s awareness of food hygiene schemes. The results show that 19% of respondents had seen or heard about this type of scheme. When prompted, 21% of respondents reported that they had seen or heard about the ‘Food Hygiene Rating scheme’, 12% had seen or heard about ‘Scores on the Doors’ and 10% had seen or heard about the ‘Food Hygiene Information Scheme’.
This latest wave of research was undertaken in November 2011, with a total number of 2,076 respondents interviewed via the TNS consumer face-to-face omnibus survey.
Starting July 1, restaurants in Albany County, New York, will be required to post a prominent sign (right) near the front entrance to announce a simple, clear verdict of county health inspections: excellent, good, fair or unsatisfactory.
Only the first three will remain on display; restaurants that receive an “unsatisfactory” rating will be required to close immediately to remedy health violations and will be reinspected within days.
Although inspection criteria, guided by state law, will not change, Albany County Department of Health restaurant inspectors will use a new rating matrix to decide which rating to award. The 
matrix takes into account the number of “blue” (minor) and “red” (serious) violations a restaurant receives.
According to the language of the final resolution, adopted by the county board of health last month, restaurants receiving a “fair” rating will be reinspected within two to three weeks, while those that receive a “good” may request a reinspection, to be carried out “as staffing and resources permit.” Inspections are done at county expense, and there is no provision in the new law for restaurants to be able to pay for a reinspection to be done more quickly.
In response to restaurateurs’ complaints about the city’s 18-month-old letter-grading system, the City Council announced Tuesday that it will hold hearings on the inspection process in late February.
“I am troubled by the wave of complaints the Council has received from restaurants — even the ones that get A’s — about the fairness and inconsistency of the food safety inspection process,” said Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn in a joint announcement with Maria del Carmen Arroyo, .jpg)
chairwoman of the council’s Health Committee, which has maintained oversight of the health department.
Through its Web site, the council has made available an online questionnaire for the city’s 24,000 restaurateurs because “we hope to learn more about what is and isn’t working, including whether the grading system has been implemented fairly,” Speaker Quinn said, adding: “Any initiative — especially 18 months after establishment — calls for scrutiny.”
The results of the survey — which asks about experiences with inspectors and administrative tribunals, and the costs of paying fines and restaurant consultants to minimize those fines — will be used to set the agenda of the hearings, said a council spokeswoman, Zoe Tobin.
“We look forward to discussing the letter grading program with the council,” said Susan Craig, a health department spokeswoman. “We think it’s making a real difference, and the public understands it and likes it.” She said that a survey last summer showed that 90 percent of New Yorkers approve of letter grading, and added that currently, 77 percent of city restaurants have A grades.
“There was one woman—it was a VIP tasting menu, I remember this: She just threw up on the table, in the middle of an extended tasting menu. They cleaned it up, and she “boot-and-rallied.” She finished the meal.”
That’s what one staffer told Christine Whitley of New York Magazine about the experiences in fancy-pants New York restaurant, Per Se.
“We can accommodate wacky people, and for the most part, 95 percent of the guests are well behaved. Then you have the couple that goes and has sex in the bathroom—that happens quite a .jpg)
lot. You have people who throw up—they throw up a lot. … You see people cheating on their spouses, overhear bits of conversation. …
"Spitting in the food doesn’t happen in New York restaurants. Honestly, people wouldn’t do that to the food. At Per Se, the cooks work 70 or 80 hours a week and make next to nothing, but they work because they want to cook. And to do that to something, to spit in prep work that someone has spent eight hours of work on—blood, sweat, and tears and all—it’s just not done. And if something drops on the floor, it gets thrown away. With the recent Department of Health crackdowns, those letter grades are bought—by that, I mean every restaurant that has an A has either an in-house specialist or a specialist they’ve hired. Before the DOH inspections, every high-end restaurant has four or five in-house inspections, and then everyone has their own set of fire drills—you put on hats and gloves when the inspector comes, you hide things away. …
“The staff is incestuous. I think half the staff is dating the other half of the staff right now. I mean, you spend 60 hours a week with these people, so what do you think is going to happen?”
Scores of city restaurants with expansive menus and sit-down service are, according to New York Daily News, escaping scrutiny by registering with the state as supermarkets or wholesalers.
The list of full-blown eateries too cool for school includes popular pizzerias in Brooklyn, a bagel store in Manhattan and a Dunkin’ Donuts in Queens.
Officially, the city Health Department is responsible for local restaurants, cafes and delis. The state Department of Agriculture and Markets oversees establishments that operate supermarkets, bodegas or wholesale markets as 50% or more of their business.
The line has blurred since the city changed its inspection system in July 2010.
Many restaurants that sell a few products to local groceries, or are attached to big supermarkets, often use this as a way to be placed under state control, records show. That has enabled them to avoid tough city reviews that could lead to a dreaded C grade — even though many operate full-scale restaurants.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Friday voiced serious concerns about New York City’s restaurant inspection and grading system, calling for a series of oversight hearings for a process that she criticized as borderline harassment.
Michael Howard Saul of The Wall Street Journal explains that beginning in July 2010, in a high-profile move that drew the ire of the food industry but won kudos from diners, the Bloomberg administration began requiring restaurants to post cards with letter grades—A, B or C—reflecting the eatery’s performance on sanitary inspections conducted by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Ms. Quinn said she will authorize a series of oversight hearings on a variety of topics related to the inspection system, including whether the grading system is working and whether it has been .jpg)
implemented fairly. The council will also examine whether food trucks and street carts should be required to post grades, mirroring what brick-and-mortar restaurants must do now.
In a statement, Susan Craig, a spokeswoman for the Health Department, noted that surveys show 90% of New Yorkers approve of the grading and inspection program.
"We are delighted by its success. … "The program was not designed to be punitive. The program’s goal remains to provide New Yorkers with critical data when making their dining choices while encouraging restaurants to operate in the cleanest, safest way possible. Our hope is to see only A’s in restaurant windows."
Robert Bookman, an attorney representing hundreds of city restaurants, said, "Folks feel the Health Department is at war with the restaurant industry in the city of New York and that they see it as a cash cow. Bottom line, the grade system is built on a faulty point-system foundation that has only served to triple fines collected, while adding nothing to public food safety."
Mr. Bookman said the restaurant industry opposes the letter-grade system entirely. But if the city continues to keep using letter grades, he said, changes should be made.
Under the current system, if a restaurant does not receive an A, a second, unannounced inspection is conducted about a month later. But that inspection is completely new, and Mr. Bookman argued that it should instead be a re-inspection where the Health Department looks only to see if the problems identified on the first visit were fixed.
That lawyer needs better arguments. There’s lots of research out there about impact and effectiveness of restaurant disclosure systems. Horror stories of filthy restaurants in NYC are publicly available every week.