Tag Archives: las vegas

Vegas awash in norovirus?

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Five Las Vegas-area high schools are being sanitized after norovirus broke out among people using the facilities for a youth football tournament.

And tests confirm several guests at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino were sent to hospital and diagnosed with norovirus.

the-hangover-02They were also part of that football tourney.

A spokesperson for the Rio hotel-casino said Monday the property believes the cause of the illness did not come from any of its food outlets after inspections were made.

The spokesperson said some of the people associated with the football teams told the property some of the parents brought sick children with them. The hotel also mentioned assisting those affected with the illness with free transportation to local healthcare facilities as well as care packages.

Café serving healthy fare in Vegas medical clinic shuttered for food safety issues; declines to comment

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The Red Velvet Cafe is known for vegetarian and vegan fare. Their three Valley locations focus on healthy food.

But, as Darcy Spears of KTNV Las Vegas reports, the Health District found plenty of problems at its snack bar in, of all places, a medical center.

The Red Velvet Cafe has a snack bar inside the Lou Ruvo Center for red.velvet.cafeBrain Health on West Bonneville.  

It’s not run by the clinic, but it caters to their clients.  

And it caught the Health District’s attention in ways the chef doesn’t want to discuss.

When we called the cafe for comment, we were directed to Chef Aneesha.

After leaving multiple messages for her, we got a one sentence e-mail saying “Red Velvet Cafe declines to comment.”

What they don’t want to talk about is the 31-demerit “C” grade from their June 11 inspection for things like improper hand-washing, employees using the dump sink to wash dishes, and no soap in the restroom.

Some blueberries in the fridge weren’t so blue anymore.  They were grey and fuzzy with mold, not to mention shriveled and dried out.  Red Velvet Cafe threw them away after health inspectors reminded them to “sell only wholesome food to the public.”

There were also multiple items including cooked beets and chipotle sauce that were past their shelf lives.

Dirty dishes and chemicals were stored next to food and on food contact surfaces.  

The ice scoop was stored on the dusty top of the ice machine.  

And inspectors found hand lotion on the hot plate where the coffee pot should have been.

Thermometers were missing and a bunch of stuff in the fridge was mis-labeled.  Chicken, vegan cheese and chipotle sauce had expiration dates that were too late.  You’re only allowed to keep prepared food for seven days, but Red Velvet Cafe’s labels showed they were keeping it for ten.

They only hung onto that “C” grade for three days.  

They were reinspected on June 14 and are currently operating under a 3-demerit “A” grade.

294 sick; ‘We’ve been vilified … We certainly weren’t managing our restaurants poorly’ Firefly forced to cut back on staff after Salmonella outbreak

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A lot of people got sick eating at one of the Firefly restaurants in Las Vegas; at least 294.

The Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) concluded that of the 21 food items that were analyzed, one item, cooked chorizo (a type of sausage), tested positive for Salmonella. Culture and PFGE-pattern results of the Salmonella fireflyisolate obtained from the cooked chorizo matched those of the outbreak strain.

Environmental Health staff contacted Firefly restaurant management to gather more information about the handling of the chorizo product. The chorizo came into the restaurant raw and was subsequently cooked by Firefly restaurant staff.

It is likely that the outbreak was due to local cross-contamination in the restaurant’s kitchen and not from a contaminated commercial food.

Now, KTNV reports the Firefly location on West Sahara Avenue is closing for weekday lunch and has laid off a handful of its staff members.

“Letting people go is devastating because they have worked for us for so long,” co-owner Tabitha Simmons tells Action News.

Tabitha’s husband and Firely co-owner John Simmons says the couple has been fighting their hardest to dig the Las Vegas chain out of the hole.

“It’s just sad because we’ve been vilified and we did not want anyone to get hurt. We certainly weren’t managing our restaurants poorly,” says Tabitha.

Consumers are apparently making their own decisions.

“We don’t want to go away. We don’t want to be run out of here. We want to continue being a part of community and we hope Las Vegas gives us that chance,” they tell Action News. 

Expired liver, pork lungs leads to closure of Goldilocks Bake Shop and restaurant in Vegas

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Goldilocks Bake Shop and Restaurant on Maryland Parkway near Karen Avenue, Las Vegas, was shut down with 50 demerits.

Darcy Spears of KTNV reports Goldilocks serves traditional Filipino dishes such as cured meat, liver, and sauteed pork lungs and heart. But Goldilocksinspectors found all of those were expired and had to be thrown away.

Goldilocks’ supervisor Bebe Illustre says they were having problems with their chiller.

Darcy: But a broken chiller doesn’t explain why stuff was expired.
Bebe: Yeah, definitely, but we were really having a problem, because when it was delivered, I know it was not delivered long ago.  Maybe it was our fault that we did not check immediately the date.

Inspectors also found several containers of potentially hazardous foods weren’t date labeled, and the person in charge wasn’t knowledgeable about proper temperatures or food storage.

In fact, egg, chicken, rice, cooked eggplant, pork and cut lettuce were all at unsafe temperatures.

Darcy: That’s the kind of thing that can be dangerous for bacteria to grow.  So why would that have been allowed to happen, do you think?
Bebe: It was… as I said, we were having a problem with the freezer/chiller at that time.

But again, you can’t blame the freezer for pork being improperly thawed, or food being stored on the floor in the walk-in fridge.

Darcy: And food doesn’t belong on the floor.
Bebe: Um, you know what?  I was not really very sure about that.

She says the employees know better, and that proper food storage should be standard operating procedure.

Goldilocks was storing raw fish over cooked chicken and pork.

Employees weren’t washing their hands properly.

The can opener blade was crusty with dried food.

And then, there’s the moldy ice machine.

Goldilocks didn’t stay dirty for long.  They re-opened in less than 24 hours with a zero-demerit A grade.

294 sick; new Firefly restaurant opens in Vegas after Salmonella outbreak

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A new Firefly Tapas Kitchen & Bar opened over the weekend at 3824 Paradise Road, a few doors down from the old Firefly, home to a salmonella firefly.salm.puppet.videooutbreak last month that sickened 294 people from 27 states and two foreign countries.

Tabitha Simmons, John Simmons’ wife and business partner, told the Las Vegas Sun, “I think we were a little apprehensive about opening. We really want to put our best foot forward, and we want to gain people’s trust back. We’re not taking this lightly.”

John Simmons recently said he had no plans to reopen the original Firefly location on Paradise because he would be moving ahead with plans that were already in place to open the new restaurant by the end of the month. He signed a lease for the new space in August.

He said inspectors from the Southern Nevada Health District approved the restaurant to open May 21. Inspectors were not immediately available for comment Friday.

Cooked chorizo collected from the previous Firefly restaurant on Paradise Road tested positive for salmonella, according to Linh Nguyen, an epidemiologist with the Health District.

Though the chorizo arrived at the restaurant raw, it was subsequently cooked by Firefly’s restaurant staff. Nguyen said the genetic fingerprint of firefly1-300x300the salmonella found in the chorizo has not been found anywhere else in the country, suggesting it was contaminated at the restaurant.

Simmons said chorizo will remain on the menu at the new restaurant.

“We still offer it,” Tabitha Simmons said. “All of the additional precautions we’ve put in place allows us to offer it.”

200 sick; Salmonella outbreak among patrons of Firefly on Paradise Restaurant – Las Vegas

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Where most health departments would have publicly done little – it takes work – the Southern Nevada Health District has already issued its second interim report on the Salmonella outbreak linked to Firefly restaurant in Las Vegas.

Excepts below:

On April 26, 2013, the SNHD performed investigative inspections and closed Firefly and Dragonfly restaurants to minimize ongoing risk of illness. The SNHD OOE, Environmental Health (EH) and Southern Nevada Public Health Laboratory firefly1-300x300(SNPHL) have been collaborating on the investigation and response to this outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Nevada State Health Division were also notified of the outbreak investigation.

A total of 33 Firefly employees were interviewed on April 26, 2013. Three employees were identified as having been recently ill with gastrointestinal symptoms after having eaten at Firefly within the previous 7 days of their illness; these workers submitted stool specimens. The OOE staff identified an additional ill staff member at a later interview, but stool testing was not offered to this employee. The timing of their illness onset dates suggests that none of these 4 restaurant workers was the source of the illness. The restaurant has a sick employee policy and employees may call-in sick when necessary.

Thus far, surveillance for additional cases revealed 200 people who became ill after eating at Firefly during April 21-26, 2013. The Epi-X posting resulted in reports of salmonellosis from five public health agencies outside of NV. From various surveillance data sources, we have received reports of illness from restaurant patrons who normally reside in twenty states (AZ, CA, CO, HI, IL, MA, MN, MS, NC, NE, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TX, UT, WA) and two foreign countries (Canada, United Kingdom) who ate at Firefly during their visits to Las Vegas.

No single menu item appeared to be the likely source for the outbreak. Additionally, no common factors or ingredients were identified among the statistically significant menu items. We also looked for associations between illness and several common ingredients such as parsley, aioli, and grated hard cheeses (parmesan and manchego). Of these, only the grated hard cheeses showed a statistical association with illness.

However, many of the statistically significant menu items contained none of that cheese.

Inspectors find roaches, mold at Ocha Cuisine in Vegas

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The owner of Ocha Thai Chinese Cuisine says her employees better know why Contact 13 showed up. She welcomed our visit and was straight up with us about the downtown restaurant’s recent health inspection.

The inspection resulted in a 48-demerit closure, which she partly blames on nervous employees.

But nervous employees doesn’t explain the multi-generational roaches that Ocha Thai Chinese Cuisineinspectors found under the sink in the kitchen and behind the work station.

Inspectors also found raw pork, cabbage, egg rolls, noodles, eggs, rice, bean sprouts and more that had to be thrown out because they were being held at unsafe temperatures.

One employee’s hair net was clearly not on the employee’s head. Instead, it was stored next to clean dishes. And utensils and the container that they were stored in were caked with excessive, dried-food debris.

Inspectors also found pink mold in the ice machine.

Ocha has since been re-inspected and re-opened with an “A” grade, which they say that they intend to keep.

Oldest food ever found on Vegas Dirty Dining

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Amanecer Salvadoreno on Main Street and Wyoming in Las Vegas was recently closed after receiving 47 demerits from the Health District during its last inspection.

Darcy Spears of KTNV spoke to the owner by phone and noted, “There’s a whole bunch of expired food.  There was stuff that dated back to 2011 in your amanecer-salvadorenokitchen.  2011!  There was stuff from 2012.  There was bleu cheese dressing from January of this year.

And yes, bleu cheese is made from mold, but three-month-old dressing is pushing it.”

Inspectors found expired queso from Halloween of 2011.

Nestea and Minute-Maid from 2012.

Inspectors found improper hand-washing — one employee didn’t even bother to use soap.

There was built-up food debris on kitchenware.

And plastic, grocery-style t-shirt bags and trash bags were being re-used to hold things like raw meat and other potentially hazardous foods.

To their credit, Amanecer Salvadoreno cleaned up their act quickly.

They were reinspected two days after shut down, and re-opened with an A grade and zero demerits.

89 now sick from Salmonella at Firefly restaurant in Vegas

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In March 2012, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) investigated a foodborne illness outbreak of salmonellosis that included 85 cases, and caused 26 emergency room visits and six hospitalizations. Over a year later, OPH announced staff provided safe food handler training to food premises operators involved in the outbreak.

That’s not a report (and if there is one, I can’t find it).

This is a report:

On April 26, 2013, the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD), Office of Epidemiology (OOE) received reports of gastrointestinal illness from eight independent groups of patrons of Firefly on Paradise or the fireflyadjacent affiliated restaurant Dragonfly on Paradise (Firefly) located at 3900 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, NV 89109. All patrons from these groups ate at the restaurant during April 21-24, 2013. Ill patrons reported symptoms of diarrhea and/or vomiting after they consumed food from Firefly restaurant, and many sought medical care for their illness. In response to these illness reports, the SNHD initiated an investigation.

On April 26, 2013, the SNHD performed an investigative inspection and closed Firefly and Dragonfly restaurants to minimize ongoing risk of illness.

Firefly restaurant uses two adjacent permitted kitchens, Firefly on Paradise (SNHD Permit Number PR0013375) and Dragonfly on Paradise (SNHD Permit

Number PR0015008), to prepare food for their customers. The inspection found that numerous conditions existed that could contribute to an outbreak of a foodborne disease and included: inadequate holding of food, inadequate cooling, improper handwashing, employee bare hand contact with ready to eat food, improper food storage practices, improper cleaning practices, and improper thawing of food.

The results of the inspection were 44 demerits for Firefly and 47 demerits for Dragonfly on Paradise. Both facilities were closed by SNHD for excessive demerits and for being associated with a large cluster of reports of illness (

Thirty samples of various foods were collected during the inspection and submitted to the SNPHL for possible testing to determine which food item(s) could have been the source of the illness.

Inspections were also conducted on April 29, 2013 of the two other Firefly restaurant outlets located in Clark County. Firefly Westside located at 9560 W. Sahara, Las Vegas received 30 demerits, and Firefly on Eastern located at 11261 S. Eastern received 6 demerits.

At least 86 patrons and 3 employees who consumed food and/or drinks at Firefly during April 21-25, 2013 contracted Salmonella infection.

FUTURE ACTIONS

1. Firefly should rectify faulty food storage equipment and practices to ensure that food will be maintained at proper temperatures.

2. The SNHD OOE staff will continue to collect information about customers who ate at Firefly during April 21-26, 2013 to establish illness occurrences among restaurant patrons, and to conduct a case-control study to identify specific food item(s), if any, were associated with illness.

3. The SNHD EH staff will continue to review Firefly’s food preparation methods to identify possible lapses in food safety procedures, and to require restaurant management to provide and implement a comprehensive food safety plan.

4. The SNHD OOE staff will continue to monitor the foodborne illness database for additional complaints of illness to determine whether the outbreak is limited to this establishment or has spread to the general community.

5. The SNPHL will perform pulsed field gel electrophoresis on the submitted specimens that were positive for Salmonella to determine if illnesses among patrons from the different groups were linked.

That report was published four days after the initial contacts regarding illnesses.

That’s a report.

39 sick; fancy food doesn’t mean safe food Vegas edition; popular tapas restaurant shut amid outbreak

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Update: Salmonella is to blame for sickening dozens of people at Firefly on Paradise, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. 

At least 39 people became ill after eating at the popular restaurant last week. 

Health officials shut down Firefly on Friday. They collected food samples from the restaurant and stool samples from patients for testing. 

Stool sample tests revealed it was Salmonella that caused the widespread illness.

The restaurant remained closed on Tuesday and will have to be reinspected before reopening. That could take several days.

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A trendy Las Vegas tapas restaurant that’s racked up hundreds of rave reviews on the website Yelp is closed after more than three dozen patrons reported food poisoning symptoms.

AP reports that Southern Nevada Health District officials said the flagship Firefly restaurant on Paradise Road was shuttered Friday and fireflywill remain closed while they run tests to try to determine the source of the outbreak.

“Everyone’s kind of devastated. This is a big deal and we take it very seriously,” said John Simmons, who owns the restaurant and two other Firefly locations in greater Las Vegas that remain open. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”

Amy Irani, the district’s acting environmental health director, said 39 people who visited the restaurant last week reported symptoms, and 10 said they sought medical attention. Symptoms included diarrhea and vomiting.

Firefly is a block from the Strip and is one of Las Vegas’ most commonly reviewed restaurants, with a coveted 4 1/2-star rating on Yelp. Customers rave about the sangria and bacon-wrapped dates.