Tag Archives: restaurant

A final plea by New York restaurateurs before letter grades arrive

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Over 10 years after the Dirty Dining series of articles appeared in the Toronto Star, which led to the creation of the red-yellow-green restaurant inspection disclosure system, and the arguments haven’t changed: people want the information, good restaurants promote their good food safety scores, and the various lobbies think the system is silly.

After watching for 10 years, I figure no politician is going to restrict this kind of information to the public; so figure out the best way to make such information available.

As New York City prepares to adopt a letter-grading disclosure system, similar to that in Los Angeles, the N.Y. Times reports that at a public hearing Tuesday, the health-department announced it had received 280 written public-hearing comments — 273 for, 6 against and one ambiguous. But none of the 80 who attended the hearing came to the plan’s defense.

Vincent J. Mazzone, owner of the Chicken Masters restaurant in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, told the hearing,

“The premise of the letter-grading is sophomoric, and punitive and demeaning to restaurateurs, as if they are schoolchildren who must be graded.”

Marc Murphy, chef and owner of Landmarc Restaurant in TriBeCa, said that average diners “will see a C grade and no one will come in — they might as well close shop. Everyone in our business is not against health inspections, but we don’t want bad letter grades from trivial infractions.”

In March the board voted 6 to 2, with one abstention, to rate cleanliness in the city’s more than 24,000 restaurants using publicly posted letter grades, compelling operators to post inspectors’ ratings that were previously available only at the department or online.

Under the program the city will supply the placards to restaurants rated with a blue A for the highest grade (from 0 to 13 points under the old system), a green B for a less sanitary but still passing rating (13 to 27 points), and a yellow C for a failing grade (28 points or more). The signs are to be dated, and prominently posted in windows or restaurant vestibules.

Thomas Slattery of the United Restaurant and Tavern Owners of New York told the commissioners

“In L.A., it’s basically a joke — everyone gets an A.”

Guess he’s never heard of C is for Chinese in L.A., but people show up anyway.

Backyard gardens supplying fancy restaurants in L.A.

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During a visit to a large, international city, I was hanging out with a public health type, who pointed out some row housing visible from the building we were in, and each one seemed to have a decent-sized garden. He said those gardens supply a lot of the produce to the high-end restaurants in the city. And they all use night soil.

Human poop.

I wonder what kind of controls those fancy restaurants in Los Angeles are employing as the availability of backyard entrepreneurs for meat and produce increases.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times,

Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica.

A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce.

"Hi," said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. "I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It’s really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?"

A few feet away, chef de cuisine Ken Takayama glanced curiously at the lanky stranger in jeans and a worn plaid shirt. He’s heard this sort of pitch before (Takayama didn’t buy any).

"Every day, every week, it’s something new," Takayama said. "You name it, they have it."

Since the economy took a dive three years ago, Takayama and others say they’ve seen more and more people showing up unannounced at restaurants, local markets and small retailers, looking to sell what they’ve foraged or grown in their backyards.

No one keeps track of the number of people selling their homegrown bounty, but scores of ads have cropped up on Craigslist across the country, hawking local produce, home-filtered honey and backyard eggs.

Laura Lawson, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says the trend harkens back to the U.S. depression of 1893, when cities encouraged owners of empty lots to let unemployed people farm them and sell the excess produce.

She said that changed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when civic leaders, reluctant to create competition for struggling farmers, advocated gardening for food — not profit.

In Los Angeles, it’s unclear whether such entrepreneurship is legal: A 1946 zoning ordinance allowed "truck gardening" but didn’t define what that meant or identify what could be grown for sale in residential areas. Because of the ambiguity, the city has shut down some backyard enterprises, but not others.

An outcry by urban farming advocates last summer prompted Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti to introduce a motion dubbed the Food and Flowers Freedom Act, which would allow people to grow "berries, flowers, fruits, greens, herbs, ornamental plants, mushrooms, nuts, seedlings or vegetables for use on-site or sale or distribution off-site."

The city’s building and safety department has stopped enforcing the old ordinance for now. The City Council is expected to vote on the proposed ordinance Friday.

No mention of microbial food safety.

Top-5 Records presents top-5 restaurant complaints

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Who doesn’t like a list? David Letterman figured this out decades ago. Today, the Detroit Free Press chimes in with the top-5 complaints of restaurant patrons.

And none of them had to do with barfing.

1. Over 100 readers responded and the overwhelming top complaint was being addressed as "you guys" — as in "How are you guys?" or "Are you guys ready to order?" (In Canadian, that may be “youse guys.”). I have to agree with this. With five daughters and coaching girls’ hockey and soccer for years, I made it a point never to refer to the young ladies as ‘youse guys.’ A guy, by definition, is male, and I’m not sure how the “you guys” thing ever caught on. And there are gender-neutral alternatives, like ‘folks’ or ‘youse.’ One male reader wrote, "I am a customer, not a casual buddy."

2. Asking, "Do you need change?" when a server picks up a guest’s check with cash. Diners considered it presumptuous or thought it was an effort to get an extra-large tip — so they left less in protest. Most servers will tell you they’re only trying to avoid an unnecessary trip back to the table.

3. Checks brought too soon irk many readers; most interpret it as a sign the restaurant wants them to leave quickly. I prefer an early check because it sucks to be waiting around with a restless child or five just to pay the bill.

4. Sortofa food safety one — wiping down tabletops and chair seats with the same dirty cloth all over the dining room

5. Loud music or televisions. Agreed. I can do that at home. Cause I like to party.

Salmonella strikes 22 at Ohio eatery

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I’ve never heard of Athens, Ohio, although it is apparently home to a heavy metal band I’ve never heard of, the aptly named Skeletonwitch (right, exactly as shown).

An unnamed but popular eatery that I have also never heard of in Athens, Ohio, was apparently home to a Salmonella outbreak last week that sicken at least 22 people.

WBNS-10TV cited Athens County health officials as saying the restaurant poses no threat to public health and that is has been inspected.

Health department spokesman Charles Hammer said the restaurant was immediately inspected, adding,

"Everything is currently in order. If we were to find a food service operation with an ongoing threat to the public health we would close that operation. this is not the case here."

Scores on doors better than on-line restaurant inspection reports

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As the New York City Health Department invited public comment on proposed rules and outlined procedures to guide the implementation of New York City’s new restaurant grading system, Don Sapatkin of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported this morning that most food establishments don’t publicize even their most positive inspection reports, and no government in the Philadelphia region requires that they be tacked up for easy viewing like a menu.

But more are going online. With the new Camden County database that went live Thursday night, the outcome of inspections are now posted for the vast majority of restaurants in the eight-county region.

Ben Chapman, a food-safety specialist at North Carolina State University said,

"Cross-contamination and hand-washing violations and temperatures," thorough cooking, hot foods kept hot and cold foods kept cold – these are the most important risk factors for food-borne illness. Dirty bathrooms matter less.

Chapman, who reviewed the new Camden County Web site at The Inquirer’s request, was impressed that the posted reports include the temperatures of various foods found by the inspector – along with the inspector’s comments, which are necessary to make sense of the numbers.

Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University who operates barfBlog, which, despite its name, is a blog written mostly by academics, said that demand for on-line inspection disclosure is often high initially and then tapers off. Because of the hodgepodge of regulations and the complexity of the reports, Powell said, it is far more useful to place highly visible, simple letter or color grades at the restaurant location. A-B-C grades are used in Los Angeles and will begin in New York City in July.

Detailed inspection reports for restaurants and other food establishments are now posted in searchable databases for most of the region.

The language differs significantly from place to place, and can be hard to interpret. And food safety experts caution that inspections are merely a snapshot in time.

7 sick from Salmonella at Oregon restaurant

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The News-Review reports that health types have found that seven people who have become ill with Salmonella ate at the Los Dos Amigos restaurant in downtown Roseburg, Oregon, from April 9 to April 17.

Douglas County Public Health officials and the Oregon Department of Human Services are investigating.

“The restaurant is fully cooperative and working with our agencies to help identify the source and address any issues,” Public Health Division Director Dawnelle Marshall said in the release. “At this point in time, no specific food item stands out as a likely source.”
 

Australian businesses fined for having cockroaches in food

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a New South Wales noodle shop that served up a dish with a side of cockroach is one of 28 food outlets named and shamed this week for poor health and safety practices.

Delicious Noodle in Taree was issued with three fines for offences including selling food with a cockroach in it and having the live and dead insects in the premises.

Bankstown Bakehouse was also fined for selling a loaf of bread with a cockroach embedded in one slice.

Both businesses have been added to the NSW Food Authority’s name and shame list.

Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan said businesses had to face the consequences of their actions.

"There is no doubt finding a cockroach in food you have paid good money for would be upsetting to say the least," Mr Whan said in a statement.

"Incidents like these are the very reason the NSW government provides consumers with such information, so they can make informed decisions about where to eat."

PEI norovirus restaurant employs the Fat Duck Defense; blames suppliers

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Following up on that norovirus outbreak linked to a restaurant in Prince Edward Island, Canada, the one where the restaurant said it has never had a food safety problem and that its ingredients were fresh and local – and where at least 48 people are barfing – a barfblog.com reader wrote:

"It’s a shame don’t you think? I was one of the unfortunate diners to get sick from eating there, and even after having 48 people reporting to the health department about being sick, the restaurant hasn’t been shut down for a thorough cleaning, and nothing has been done, no apology or anything, and even worse, when my sister-in-law called the restaurant to talk with them, they denied it and said it couldn’t have happened since they never got sick from eating the food (two people from the restaurant have since admitted to being sick) and then said it must have come from her suppliers."

(This is known as the Fat Duck Defense in honor of Heston Blumenthal and his staff sickening over 500 customers with norovirus in the U.K. in early 2009.)

"Unfortunately we will probably never find out what it was that caused all of us to become sick."

Food porn, not food safety, dominates public statement from PEI noro restaurant

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In further evidence of how seemingly good people confuse food safety with food pornography, Francine Thorpe, the owner of a Prince Edward Island restaurant at the center of a norovirus outbreak that has now sickened up to 48 people decided to make a public statement:

“In our history we are proud to say that we have never been cited for any food-related infractions by provincial health officials. … We take pride in our food service, our people and more importantly we value our loyal, cherished customers. We maintain a modern, sanitary kitchen, employing some of the best experienced food preparation people in the business. We try to buy local products and serve only the very best of fresh ingredients. We very much regret what has transpired and are determined to find out exactly what happened.”

Local and fresh do not mean safe. Never been cited for food infractions doesn’t mean you haven’t made people barf, or that your employees haven’t shown up for work while sick. Tell the good citizens of PEI about your employee training and hygiene procedures rather than how local and fresh your ingredients are. It has to do with a lot of people barfing.

Nuevo Folleto Informativo: Oops, sucedió otra vez: Descuidos al cambiar pañales puede causar enfermedades

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Benjamin Chapman

Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain

Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:

– No es tan solo caca 
de un bebé tierno; Norovirus, Shigella y Salmonella pueden ser transmitidas a la comida a través de la caca (incluyendo la caca de bebé) y causar enfermedades.

– En el 2007, un brote de enfermedad alimenticia, el cual causo 4 hospitalizaciones, fue vinculado con el cambio de pañales a un niño con diarrea en un Chuck E. Cheese de Maryland.

– Recuerde al mozo de limpiar y desinfectar las mesas luego de ser usadas; no cambie bebés en la cocina(especialmente aquellos con diarrea).

Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
Puede seguir las historias de los folletos informativos y barfblog en twitter
@benjaminchapman y @barfblog.