The owners of Woody Grill restaurant and takeaway in 1 Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush, pleaded guilty in court to a total of eight offences.
H&F Council’s environmental health team stepped in after complaints from residents who fell ill after eating at the restaurant.
Officers found the restaurant in a filthy condition, including dirty food preparation surfaces, chopping boards and fridge door handles.
In addition, cooked food was not protected from raw food, animal droppings were found in the back store room with no pest control measures in place and health and safety paperwork was not kept.
The restaurant’s owner, Cengiz Erpolat, was also ordered to pay costs of £4,327.50 and a £120 victim surcharge at Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 23 February.
Erpolat owns six other Woody Grill restaurants across the capital and has previous convictions for similar offences in neighbouring Ealing.
“When customers eat out the very least they can expect is food that doesn’t make them ill,” said Cllr Wesley Harcourt, H&F Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport and Residents’ Services. “And these failings are also unfair on the vast majority of businesses who invest properly in proper hygiene standards to keep residents safe.
McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood and Steaks, a favorite lunch destination of Center City bankers and Philadelphia city officials, was issued an order to cease and desist operations this week after an inspector discovered “wastewater backing up into the establishment” and “nonpotable water” leaking from the kitchen ceiling.
Though the restaurant managers agreed to immediately shut down on Wednesday until repairs were complete, business went on as usual.
“We never closed,” said a floor manager who answered the phone on Thursday. She declined to provide her name.
Asked why the restaurant had continued to operate without interruption, a corporate official for the restaurant chain issued a statement.
“We acted swiftly to resolve the situation, and as a result were able to remain open,” said Howard Cole, senior vice president and chief operating officer of McCormick & Schmick’s. “The location has passed all compliance inspections. It is important to us at McCormick & Schmick’s that food safety measures are instituted and followed.”
In his report, health sanitarian Terrance Carter said there was “a foul odor in the establishment” during the Wednesday inspection.
When Carter asked about the wastewater standing in the sinks and on the floor, the person in charge explained that a plumber had been called “several days” before, but no one had shown up. Carter advised the restaurant to call again immediately, according to the report.
Jim Chan, the recently retired manager of Toronto’s DineSafe program, reviewed the inspection document at the request of the Inquirer.
“Wow, what a bad report!” said Chan. “It shows that they did not check and correct food safety and sanitation issues until the inspection. They sat and waited until being told to get things done.”
Chan said he was disturbed at the mention of the foul odor.
“When you say that, you’re saying there’s a possibility of sewage,” he said. “If it’s just water backing up, you don’t smell a foul odor.”
In most North American cities, an order to cease and desist requires management to shut down the business promptly and tell all patrons to leave, Chan said.
A spokesman for the Philadelphia health department was unable to explain why McCormick & Schmick’s had remained open.
For years in Philadelphia, restaurants have been able to ignore cease and desist orders. In mid-February, the city announced it had given health inspectors the power to shut down an eatery without calling in the department of Licenses & Inspections.
Those powers will go into effect sometime this month.
Linda Vail with the Ingham County Health Dept. told 6 News, “There are a lot of questions about what they ate, where they were, that could eventually help us narrow down potentially how the whole thing got started.”
With numbers climbing daily, Vail expects to see those numbers continue to grow, especially with secondary cases now being reported.
Newly-released health ministry data shows a marked increase in mandated closures of Czech food establishments by health and safety inspectors. During 2015, 259 restaurants and other food establishments were ordered closed across the county for various hygiene-related violations.
Around 23,000 inspections of eateries were carried out last year, according to official figures from the ministry of health’s food hygiene inspectorate, which is headed by chief hygiene officer Vladimir Valenta:
“The main violations related to operational safety, for example permitting clean and unclean items to mix; also shortcomings in sanitation procedures, poor cleaning routines, and equipment in poor condition.”
In total, CZK 13 million in fines were levied for unhygienic conduct spanning around 4,500 violations. In 919 specific cases, establishments were ordered to immediately address food safety shortcomings. Mandated closures were up by 105 in comparison to 2014.
During 2015, hygiene inspectors also banned 2,000 persons from working in the food service industry for endangering public safety.
Word of mouth, spread through social circles or social media, can make or break an eatery — especially in a hyper-competitive market like Fort Collins. A negative one-word rating from the county health department can spell disaster.
That’s why the owners of restaurant 415 at 415 Mason St. in Old Town Fort Collins are objecting to the latest in a trio of “inadequate” ratings their eatery has received from the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment.
“We want to be the catalyst for change,” said 415 co-owner Andre Mouton. “The system is severely lacking; it’s broken.”
County health officials periodically examine restaurants and other food-service facilities, looking for factors that can increase the risk of patrons contracting a food-borne illness. Detailed reports on those risk factors are summarized by a risk index that features five ratings: excellent, good, average, marginal and inadequate.
The one-word ratings are published weekly in the Coloradoan. An inadequate rating gives people the impression the restaurant is serving bad food, said Mouton, a veteran restaurateur.
In reality, he said, many of the violations that led to the inadequate rating 415 received in February were administrative in nature, such as not having the proper warning on its menu about consuming raw or undercooked foods, employee drink cups being placed next to clean dishes and a bottle of Windex stored next to clean linens.
According to the complete report from the inspection, 415 received its largest deductions for issues of adequate cooking and potential cross-contamination from equipment, and for hot and cold holding of food. The full inspection is available at noconow.co/415inspect.
Mouton and co-owner Seth Baker admit there are areas in which they can improve, “but our kitchen is one of the cleanest in the city.”
According to the restaurant’s inspection history, 415 has been rated inadequate in each of its last three complete inspections, dating back to October 2013. The restaurant has been docked points for adequate cooking and hot or cold handling in the majority of the eight inspection reports listed on the county website.
Business has unfairly suffered, Baker said. “We strive to be a great place to work,” he said. “We are all local kids and the community is important to us. We are doing everything in our power” to be the best.
Mouton and Baker, however, say they are committed to working to change and improve the county’s 20-year-old inspection rating system.
Each county has a slightly different rating system. Larimer County issues ratings from inadequate to excellent. Weld County gives letter grades from A to F. Industry representatives don’t believe letter grades are fair and prefer more detail be included in reports to the public.
“That could be a double-edged sword,” Devore said. No rating system is perfect but many work pretty well, he said. “The main reason for the rating system is to get some general information out to the public so they can evaluate it.”
Mouton said “it’s not fair to us or other restaurants” to provide a one-word rating, which does not provide a full explanation of violations. “We are not trying to cheat the system. We want to create clarity. We are trying to fix the problem with how things are scored.”
OK, explain those inadequate cooking, hot and cold holding of food and cross-contamination violations.
The People’s Picnic provides evening meals twice a week in Norwich.
“We will not allow the establishment to tear down the foundations upon which The People’s Picnic was built,” said its Facebook post.
Norwich City Council said it would be a “last resort” to shut them down.
The People’s Picnic volunteers have served up to 60 home-cooked meals on Haymarket on Tuesdays and Saturdays for about four years.
Officers visited the stall this week and the organisers said they were told they would have to register with the council.
Karen Cully, one of the organisers, said: “We not stupid – we’re not trying to poison people and we never have. It’s volunteers cooking in their own kitchens and it’s mainly stew.
Norwich City Council said it was free for food businesses to register, it was standard procedure to visit food providers and common practise for volunteers’ home kitchens to be inspected.
Carr was forced to stump up $1760 in two fines last year for noncompliance in relation to cleaning requirements with details published on the NSW Food Authority register and reported in the Express Advocate.
“What this guy found was insignificant — silly things like paper towels,” he said.
“I think it is obviously just revenue-raising for Wyong Council and these people are being sent to nail businesses left, right and centre.”
They are then handed a slick certificate to post up in view of customers.
However Bankstown is pushing for the scheme, which is currently voluntary, to be mandated across all eligible food outlets.
A similar push is on by local councils England.
The Food Authority falls under NSW Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair’s portfolio.
However The Express’s request for comment was directed to Food Authority chief executive Dr Lisa Szabo.
When asked whether she would support mandating Scores on Doors state wide, Dr Szabo said the authority preferred to keep it voluntary.
“Displaying a Scores on Doors certificate can be a marketing advantage for businesses that comply with food safety legislation because it can provide a point of difference from competitors,” she said.
Fifty three of 152 councils in NSW have signed up to implement the program.
In south west Sydney only Bankstown and Liverpool are currently members.
The authority’s NSW Food Safety Strategy has set a target of 75 per cent business participation by 2021.
Bankstown Council has signed up 33 retail food businesses out of about 600 this financial year.
The scheme excludes supermarkets, delicatessens or greengrocers, service stations, convenience stores, mobile food vans and temporary markets.
Which further undermines the system.
Chicken Heaven owner Paul Hong, who proudly displays a five star rating in the window of the Chester Hill takeaway, agreed the program should be compulsory.
“Yes. Based on the individual [business] keeping up their cleanliness, hygiene and all that required in the food industry,” he said.
The health authority said it plans to launch the Google Maps app designed to provide information to the public regarding its inspections of restaurants and other food establishments in the city with the aim of making such information more transparent and ensuring food safety.
The Google Maps feature will allow customers to look up online whether restaurants and food retail outlets they plan to visit follow safe food-handling procedures and have passed all health inspections, according to the department.
The department said it regularly carries out inspections of businesses that serve food but does not publish the inspection reports, adding that by launching the new app, people will be able to search for information about food establishments, including address, photos and inspection scores.
Nhat Trang, the seafood restaurant located in Nha Trang, the capital city of Khanh Hoa Province, proved no certification for food safety, Nguyen Sy Khanh, deputy chairman of the local People’s Committee, said on Wednesday.
An inspection was conducted by local officials under Khanh’s direction the same day.
Neither an authorized qualification related to food safety nor official contracts on laboring of the venue were available, according to the investigation’s result.
Such attempts were made not only in Nha Trang, but throughout the entire province of Khanh Hoa to rectify food service issues, namely price increasing by restaurateurs and lack of ethical manners in serving guests, said Tran Son Hai, deputy chairman of the provincial People’s Committee.
The restaurant was reported to local officials by two diners on Monday after one of its staff members splashed them with leftover food after they expressed disappointment with their meal.
The owners of Woody Grill restaurant and takeaway in 1 Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush, pleaded guilty in court to a total of eight offences.
