Tag Archives: restaurant

Why everyone should be vaccinated for hepatitis A; food worker at 2 Colorado restaurants prompts call for shots

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Patrons of two Grand Lake, Colorado, restaurants are being urged to get either immune globulin (IG) or hepatitis A shots following the discovery that a worker employed at both eateries has a case of hepatitis A.

The two restaurants were identified by the Denver Post as Sagebrush BBQ & Grill and Max & T’s Bar and Grill by the Grand County Public Health department.

Officials emphasized that both restaurants have had very good inspection records and are cooperating in the investigation.

The health department said there are no other confirmed cases of hepatitis A at this time.

Ratatouille: mouse jumped from bowl in UK restaurant

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A west London restaurant owner was criticized for an "appalling catalogue of offences" after health inspectors saw a mouse jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce in the kitchen.

Press Association reports that inspectors visiting the Kam Tong, Hung Tao and Kiasu restaurants in Queensway, Bayswater, found mouse droppings all over the kitchens and cockroach eggs in the dim sum and baskets of prawn crackers.

One rodent was photographed scampering along a kitchen drainpipe in the Kam Tong restaurant after jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce which was about to be served to customers.

Owner Ronald Lim, of Barnet, north London, admitted 17 counts of breaching food hygiene regulations at Southwark Crown Court.

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC ordered him to pay fines totaling £30,000, plus £18,131 costs, and handed him an eight-month jail term suspended for two years.

Abu Dhabi blames outdated food safety attitudes for problems, mandatory training for all food handlers by 2012

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To coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training. ?

So it seems reasonable to have some minimal training for those who prepare food for public consumption.

Some U.S., Canadian and Australian states or municipalities require at least one person at a restaurant or food outlet to have some food safety training, even if that person is at home in bed. Others require training for everyone who touches food; others require nothing.

So the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority (ADFCA) is way ahead when it announced that all employees who handle food must be trained in hygiene by the end of 2012.

The food safety watchdog was straightforward yesterday when it said outdated attitudes to food safety are to blame for food workers failing hygiene tests.

The National reported that so far 40 per cent of workers, about 17,000, have been trained, and 60 per cent of those have failed the exams. Eleven per cent of all the emirate’s food workers have passed.

Earlier, the authority partially blamed language barriers for the problem, but yesterday it said the absence of a culture of hygiene and food safety in restaurants and food outlets was also a major cause.

Mohammed al Reyaysa, the authority’s spokesman, said,

“Unfortunately a lot of people think going into the kitchen and dealing with food does not need any science and anyone can do it. This is an old way of thinking and it is changing after the requirements and regulations being implemented.”

Mr al Reyaysa’s comments came after the release of a wide-ranging annual report, which detailed the agency’s programmes, draft laws, financial status and the total number of inspections and food establishment closures last year.

The high failure rate on hygiene exams raises questions as to why ADFCA’s spending of almost Dh1 billion in 2009 has not led to better results. Passing the tests is currently not a requirement, but Mr al Reyaysa indicated that it may eventually be obligatory for food workers in the emirate, posing a potentially protracted problem for employers.

It’s excellent Abu Dhabi is getting serious about requirements and puts them way ahead of many North American jurisdictions. Unfortunately, what constitutes a certified food safety course is often crap. So figure out what the barriers are to effective training and figure out what works and what doesn’t – what kind of training actually translates into food service staff practicing safe food preparation.

The best restaurants will not wait for a government edict and will go ahead and improve their training and compliance — today.

‘To appreciate food and life is to appreciate animals, too’ doggie dining grows in America

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America isn’t France, but increasingly dogs are allowed to join folks for a public meal.

Sharon Peters writes in today’s The USA Today that across America, an ever-growing number of eating establishments, many of them high-end, are opening their patios to diners who want to share their eating-out experience with their pets.

Art Smith, owner/chef of the chic Art and Soul restaurant on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C, which draws scores of Washingtonians to its canine-welcoming patio every week, says,

"To appreciate food and life is to appreciate animals, too.”

In canine-crazy Carmel, Calif., many restaurants have pup-friendly patios, including Bahama Billy’s Island Steakhouse, where the 16 patio tables are often jam-packed with patrons with pooches.

There are never any outbursts of canine bad behavior, says co-owner Sylvia Sharp. The dogs "seem to view (the patio) as neutral territory, kind of like Switzerland."

At trendy downtown eatery Nosh in Colorado Springs, the massive patio — in the shadow of Pike’s Peak — becomes a veritable playground for dogs and owners every summer Sunday. Plastic kiddie pools are filled with water, tables are arranged to maximize romp-around room, and off-leash dogs frolic dog-park style, sniffing up each other (and the humans), sampling treats from the bags of doggie goodies presented free to each diner accompanied by a dog, and coaxing each other into splash-fests.

Lack of food safety costly for diners, eateries; Alabama training center tries to fix errors

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Here’s a common scene from many of the mom and pop restaurants I’ve visited: a towel used to sop up juice from raw hamburger meat also is used to wipe down counters.

Phyllis Fenn, a standardization officer with the Alabama Department of Public Health’s bureau of environmental services, has seen the same thing – too often.

The Montgomery Advertiser reports today the Food Safety Training Center on Atlanta Highway is an attempt both to help restaurant owners avoid bad inspections and to protect their customers’ health.

When Alabama adopted the 2005 Food Code, one provision was that at least one person in restaurants where raw foods are handled, including fast-food eateries and sushi bars, would become food safety certified. When the state adopted the code, it opted to go with a lead-in time — Jan. 1 of this year.

The classes can help restaurants improve their health department inspection scores, which is exactly what they are designed to do, Fenn said.

She said the certification class helps restaurants reduce food-related illnesses as well as teaching them about the proper temperatures to cook and hold food (the temperature of food that sits out at a buffet) and proper hygiene.
 

Avoiding ‘C’ food in New York City

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According to the New York Post, some of the city’s best-known eateries are lucky the Health Department is starting to hand out letter grades next week — instead of last month — because thousands would have ended up with a bottom-rung "C" plastered in their front windows.

Officials estimate that about 6,000 of the city’s 24,000 eateries had enough violation points in June to have earned the lowest mark on a three-letter rating scale devised by the city.

The "C" restaurants would have ranged from the Lion, a sizzling new spot in Greenwich Village, to the venerable Gallagher’s steakhouse in Midtown, to the century-old Katz’s deli emporium on the Lower East Side.

Even Radio City Music Hall’s snack bar made the "C" list.

The Health Department plans to award "A" grades to restaurants that accumulate no more than 13 violation points; "B" to those with 14 to 27 points; and "C" for 28 or more points.

Restaurant owners and managers contacted by The Post who would have faced a "C" last month were surprisingly supportive of the grading system.

"It’s for the sake of public health — I’m perfectly OK with that," said Jake Dell, son of the owner of Katz’s deli, which accumulated 47 points on its record for such infractions as evidence of roaches and mice, as well as bad plumbing.

Like every restaurateur contacted, he said the conditions cited by inspectors have since been corrected. A reinspection July 6 brought Katz’s score down to 23 — in the "B" range.

Don’t cook when you’re crook

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Does the headline mean, if you’re a convict, don’t cook? Lots of convicts cook. So I checked the dictionary where I found an Australian/New Zealand definition for crook: a situation that is bad, unpleasant, or unsatisfactory, or (of a person or a part of the body) unwell or injured : a crook knee.

It means if you’re sick, don’t work.

With the chill of winter well and truly upon us, the risk of viral gastro contamination heats up, (New South Wales, that’s in Australia, includes Sydney, and it’s what they would call winter right now) Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan warned today as he urged chefs and cooks to take care in the kitchen during the peak viral gastro season.

"This warning applies particularly to those food industry professionals who come into contact with the preparation and service of food for hundreds, if not thousands of people," Minister Whan said.

"If you’re crook don’t cook is a good basic rule to apply in the workplace."

"Under the Food Standards Code it is illegal for food handlers to handle food when they have gastric illness. It is also illegal for food businesses to knowingly have staff working if they have gastric illness.

"The NSW Food Authority is aware of cases where staff have been asked to work when they were sick, or have not told their supervisor they were sick, putting many people at risk.”
 

Suspected salmonella poisoning closes Wisconsin restaurant

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Officials with the Kenosha County Health Department have shut down a local restaurant after at least 10 people have been confirmed with salmonella poisoning.

The Kenosha News reports an official with the Kenosha County Health Department confirmed that it closed Baker Street Restaurant & Pub, 6208 Green Bay Road, but that official would not comment about why the restaurant was closed down.

However, Tom Stemple, an employee of Tricoli Restaurants, which owns Baker Street, said 10 to 18 people who ate at the restaurant were sick with salmonella and owner Lou Tricoli was contacting all of his Baker Street employees to get them tested, adding,

“He’s gathering everyone together, trying to interview them to help find out the source of this. He’s trying to sort things out so that he can help protect everyone —his employees and the public.”

Restaurant inspection disclosure sucks in Maryland

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Foodies wanting to know how clean their favorite restaurant is must file public records requests in Wicomico County.

For several years, the health department has sought to change that by posting details of restaurant inspections online. But budget cuts, combined with opposition from restaurant owners, have made that an elusive goal, said Stuart White, supervisor of community health in the environmental health division.

"I think it would promote better practices. You’d want a better grade if it would be posted," White said.

A growing number of health departments across the U.S. are initiating programs aimed at improving the transparency of restaurant inspections, said Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. He said many health departments are putting information online, and others are placing scores — in the form of letter grades, numerical scores or color-coded decals — in plain sight at restaurants.

"It really makes the public part of the inspection work force," he said.

A study in June’s Journal of Food Protection suggests cross-contamination violations — which can lead to illnesses — may be more widespread than previously thought, and they may occur more frequently during peak hours.

Researchers from North Carolina State University used video cameras to monitor 47 food handlers at eight volunteering kitchens and found that the workers committed an average of one cross-contamination violation an hour.

"It really changes how we think about training," said Ben Chapman, the lead author of the study and assistant professor and food safety specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences at NCSU. Researchers from Kansas State University and the University of Guelph in Ontario co-wrote the study.
 

Blame the worker; Pennsylvania restaurant reopens after eight sickened by Salmonella; hostess dismissed

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Nunzi’s, a popular east Erie, PA, restaurant reopened Wednesday after it voluntarily closed for two weeks after a salmonella outbreak that sickened eight people.

Dennis Williams, a lawyer representing restaurant owners Michael and Betsy Cilladi, said a young hostess tested positive for Salmonella and she is no longer employed at the restaurant.

Williams further stated, "The obvious conclusion is that she somehow transmitted it to those eight people. For lack of a better word, Nunzi’s has been exonerated.”

I’m not comfortable hearing such certainty from anyone, especially a lawyer.

Blame the employee? Did the bosses ask employees to work, even if they were sick? Did they have high expectations for personal hygiene, especially during busy times? Did the owners create a workplace culture that fosters and encourages microbial food safety?