Tag Archives: restaurant

Tia Keenan live tweets a DOH inspection at Brushstroke in NYC

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 Tia Keenan
We are the well-heeled and we are PISSED that the Health Dept. is disturbing our dinner at Brushstroke. Tsk tsk.

Not everyone responds well to an inspection by health types.

Eater NY documents the live tweets of cheese guru Tia Keenen who had her meal at upscale David Bouley restaurant Brushstroke interrupted by a DOH inspection. Excerpts include:

@kasekaiserina
Tia Keenan
This crowd is not accustomed to enduring the petty injustices of Bureaucracy! They don’t wait for anything! Take your walk-in temp and gtfo.

Tia Keenan
Oh god the inspector is taking the temp of a custard.

Tia Keenan
Our meal has stopped. RT if you know the NYC Health Dept is an extortion racket.

Tia Keenan
Obligatory bow-tied wasp yelling at inspector “Leave! We don’t want you here!”

Tia Keenan
Sassy waiter at Brushstroke last night told us if we didn’t like something we could go across the street to Ninja!!!! So awesome.

Passing the blame: ‘unreliable students and migrants’ reason Melbourne cockroach-infested eatery fined $20,000

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A Melbourne restaurant has been fined $20,000 after an inspector found its kitchen infested with cockroaches, rodent droppings and accumulated grease, dirt and food waste.

A director of Ten Ren’s Tea Station agreed to temporarily shut its upstairs kitchen on March 7 this year – after a complaint from a customer – when authorities feared for public health.

Senior magistrate Dan Muling yesterday said there was no justification or excuse for the conditions and told its directors they ”wouldn’t have your own kitchen looking like this”.

Prosecutor Sebastian Reid said the initial inspection revealed the kitchen to have ”heavy infestation” of cockroaches, some rodent activity and no method to sanitise food contact surfaces and utensils.

Mr Reid listed more than 30 examples of Food Act breaches to walls, the floor, bowls, fridges and freezers, shelves, door seals, handles, exhaust hood and microwave oven.
These included a high number of live and nesting cockroaches, rodent droppings and heavy accumulation of grease, dirt, food waste and rubbish on the floor, under fridges, cooking equipment and kitchen benches.

Defence barrister Tim Bourke said the directors started the restaurant in 2008 and had employed unreliable students and migrants.

3 Austin restaurants closed for selling stolen supermarket meat

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Eater reports that 60-year-old East Austin barbecue legend Sam’s BBQ, Willie’s Bar-B-Que and La Morenita all had their business licenses revoked as a result of Operation Meat Locker. Austin police had been working with HEB for the past three months to bust meat thieves — it’s a "growing crime" in Central Texas.

Apparently thieves shove meat down their pants to sneak it out of grocery stores and "walk long distances or ride the bus" in order to sell it to restaurants.

Shockingly, investigators discovered "food safety was not a priority."

Officers posing as meat thieves approached 25 restaurants with the stolen meat, and only the three listed above went for it. Five arrests have been made. The restaurants can apply to have their permits reinstated but must remain closed until that happens.
 

Jamie Oliver too much food porn, not enough food safety

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Celebrity chef-type Jamie Oliver – who was a stand-out in our 2004 paper, Spot the Mistake about celebrity chefs and food safety mistakes — may be trying to rid Los Angeles of chocolate milk, but health inspectors want him to pay more attention to crap in his U.K. restaurants.

The Mail Online reports Oliver has been criticized by health inspectors after a string of customers and staff suffered food poisoning at two of his Italian restaurants.

The TV chef came under fire when inspectors uncovered a catalogue of food safety failings at his chain of Jamie’s Italian eateries.

Two customers at the Reading branch were struck down with the potentially-fatal norovirus after eating dodgy shellfish.

Staff and customers were also struck down with suspected food poisoning at his restaurant in Cambridge.

The chef – named 967th in the Sunday Times Rich List with a personal fortune of £65 million – proudly boasts he is ‘passionate’ about good food ‘no matter what’.

But inspectors threatened legal action when they discovered undercooked burgers were being served to customers at the Leeds restaurant.

Staff at his Guildford restaurant were also criticised for exposing customers to the harmful E. coli bacteria.

The failures were uncovered after inspectors carried out unannounced spot-checks at 11 restaurants between November 2009 and November last year.

Oliver’s Ministry of Food website offers a range of tips for a ‘clean and safe’ kitchen.

But at Jamie’s Italian in Cardiff, which serves up to 1,000 people every day, a health inspector warned that careless preparation of uncooked chicken was ‘significantly increasing the risk of cross-contamination’.

Peter Berry, PR Manager at Jamie Oliver Limited, said that many of the issues were from over a year ago, adding, “These points are all relatively minor and have not seriously affected the generally excellent EHO ratings which all of the restaurants in the Jamie’s Italian collection are proud to display. Jamie’s Italian also employs two full-time in-house food safety specialists to ensure the highest standards.”

Thermometers would be a useful kitchen addition. Oliver doesn’t talk about thermometers on TV.

Mouse falls onto diner’s lap at Illinois restaurant

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A mouse fell onto a patron’s lap at Logan’s Roadhouse in Normal, Illinois after an apparent fall from the ceiling.

The incident happened April 29 while the person was eating at Logan’s, 313 S. Veterans Parkway, according to a complaint filed Monday with the McLean County Health Department. Logan’s had already called pest control prior to the department receiving and following up on the complaint, said agency spokeswoman Erin Tolle Link.

"They are being very cooperative in taking the steps necessary to correct the issue," she said Friday.
 

Fake health inspector phones Des Moines restaurant, talks to real inspector

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There’s been a spate of health inspector scams preying on restaurants throughout the U.S. in the past five years. From handwashing signs for cash to extorting fake inspection fees, the fake inspector business has been booming.

WHO-TV reports a man calling a Des Moines restaurant pretending to be a state health inspector was interrupted when a real inspector got on the phone.

Emily Wegner says she was at the restaurant Wednesday when she heard a server yell into the kitchen that the state health department was on the phone. Wegner, whose job it is to inspect restaurants, says she got on the phone and told the caller that he was not an inspector and that she was.

The fake inspector wanted to schedule an appointment but asked for a deposit for the visit.

Wegner says the state does not charge for inspections.

Wegner says she got the caller’s information and reported the scam to police.
 

Hawaii norovirus outbreak prompts scrubbing of restaurant

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The Hawaiian Department of Health said a Hale­iwa restaurant linked to 42 cases of suspected norovirus in an outbreak on the North Shore has been scrubbed and is safe, but other eating establishments and food sources are still being investigated.

State Epidemiologist Sarah Park said the owners of Cholo’s Homestyle Mexican II voluntarily shut down the restaurant Tuesday afternoon to do a thorough cleaning and reopened Wednesday.

The restaurant disinfected all surfaces and utensils, under the health inspectors’ supervision, and disposed of a lot of food, she said.

The department tallied 42 suspected cases of norovirus as of yesterday afternoon. All of those sickened reported eating at Cholo’s.

Following testing, norovirus was positively identified in one.

In addition to investigating the restaurant, where workers also reported being ill, the Health Department had been looking at the possibility that the virus spread through food served Sunday at the Hale­iwa Metric Century Ride bicycling event on the North Shore. Some of that food came from Cholo’s.

Ride participant Brent Hama­saki, 40, of Kalihi, his son, 15, and father-in-law became sick Monday night.

"The only thing we had in common was we all had the fish taco plate, and we all had the salsa and the chips."

Cockroaches take over Australia restaurant, force closure

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Cockroaches took over the kitchen and dining areas of a Canberra restaurant, spilled on to customers, ran across food preparation areas and left feces behind counters and fridges.

Z Brasserie manager Nicole Maddock told the Canberra Times, ”[When] eating staff meals we’d have cockroaches running across our plates.” Fifteen staff have lost their jobs due to the closure.

The restaurant said the landlord, the Hyperdome Shopping Centre, had failed to fix the problem.

Z Brasserie owner Debbie Wentworth-Shields said after months of battling centre management the issue came to a head last week when she removed a picture from a wall and inadvertently showered a customer’s child with cockroaches.
 

Squirrel sells out at Edinburgh restaurant

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The owner of an Edinburgh restaurant which has put grey squirrel on the menu has described it as the "ultimate ethical food."

Spoon cafe bistro in the capital said the grey squirrels were being killed to protect Scotland’s native red squirrel so it "made sense" to eat them.

But animal welfare charities are divided about eating squirrel.

Owner Richard Alexander told the BBC the squirrel meat was free range, low fat and low on air miles.

Mr Alexander said since it went on the menu on Friday it has sold out every day.

Some say squirrel tastes like wild boar. Others think it is more a cross between duck and lamb.

Amy says squirrel tastes like chicken — if you add ketchup.

Health officials probe outbreak at unnamed Florida restaurant

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Hernando Today reports that Paul and Alice Andrews, 87, of High Point, enjoyed a dinner the night of March 6 at the same restaurant along U.S. 19, north of Tampa.

They didn’t regain their appetites for the rest of the week, they said.

They spent most of last week resting at home because the virus they suffered through sapped them of their strength.

"I’ve never ever encountered anything like this," said Alice Andrews. "It was just terrible."

Andrews and her husband were two out of numerous people who filed reports with the Hernando County Health Department, which quickly launched an environmental health investigation, according to a media release.

Ann-Gayl Ellis, an agency spokeswoman, said the investigation kicked off after several people reported "symptoms of gastrointestinal illness" as of Friday.

Ellis did not reveal the name of the restaurant that was probed, but Andrews and his wife confirmed Tuesday they had gotten sick — along with a half-dozen more of their friends — after dining at the same Spring Hill restaurant.

The name of the business is being withheld by Hernando Today because the case is still open.

Ellis said of the 45 or so filed reports with her agency, most of them had eaten at the same restaurant while the others lived with or came in contact with those who had dined there.

A woman who manages the restaurant said the health department had sent two people to inspect the business Monday. They stayed for five or more hours and found nothing wrong with the food or the temperatures used to cook the food, she said.

Nina Mattei, a health department spokeswoman, said five stool samples were collected and sent to a Tampa laboratory to determine what organism caused the illnesses. The tests should be completed within the next few days, she said.

Ellis said the symptoms the Andrews suffered from were consistent with the norovirus, which can be transferred by food, water and from person to person.

"They need to close that place down and sanitize that entire area," said Andrews of the restaurant.

She had eaten there "several times" prior to last Sunday, but doesn’t plan to return.