Reports from the Associated Press today suggest that more than 120 people who ate from the same booth at the Taste of Chicago food festival last week became ill, at least nine of them with salmonella poisoning and 10 who were hospitalized. The number could increase because lab results are pending in some of the cases.
The 126 people are reported to have ate at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth, which served cucumber salad over hummus, grilled lamb and beef, pomegranate barbecued chicken and baklava.
It was the first confirmed outbreak of a food-borne illness associated with the Taste of Chicago in at least 20 years.

A Chicago Department of Health press release yesterday shared some interesting facts about food safety at taste of Chicago, which would make this outbreak a real blow to city inspectors who seem not to make light of food safety. From the press release:

– Taste of Chicago is by far the most intensively regulated food service operation in the city. The event features a 24-hour-a-day food safety presence – teams of CDPH sanitarians inspect and re-inspect the 70-plus food booths from 8:30 a.m. to midnight each day, and staff hired by the Illinois Restaurant Association monitors and logs the temperatures in the refrigerated storage trucks overnight.

– All vendors are required to undergo training to prepare, serve and store food safely under outdoor conditions.

– Scrutiny is intense. A food booth is typically inspected at least four times each day, while a typical city restaurant is inspected twice a year.

– While most vendors do an exceptionally good job of ensuring food safety, the intense scrutiny typically results in CDPH ordering the disposal of food that does not meet its exacting standards. Each year, about 2,000 pounds of food (an average of 200 pounds a day) at the event are disposed of by order of CDPH inspectors.