Unclean cuisine

[isilzha]

Unclean cuisine

How does your favorite restaurant rate on the health scale?

By Monica Eng |Chicago Tribune reporter

October 9, 2008

Sonya Enoch, a Chicago Department of Public Health inspector, takes a look in the kitchen of an upscale Polish restaurant on the Northwest Side that was later temporarily closed. (Tribune photo by Jose M. Osorio / September 17, 2008)

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When Arlene Lopez and Sonya Enoch walk into a restaurant, it's like your mother-in-law dropping in unannounced. Except these two snoops are armed with flashlights, thermometers and keen eyes for "fresh, black and pointy rodent droppings."

Lopez and Enoch are inspectors for the Chicago Department of Public Health. And despite their pleasant faces, they're the last people restaurateurs want to see.

We found that out in dramatic fashion on a recent inspection tour with the pair. They put the fear of City Hall into one restaurant, closed down another and let us in on the warning signs that can help you decide whether a place is safe and clean.

Two quick lessons: Look for an inspection report on the wall that will tell you if serious problems were found during the last city visit. And don't necessarily judge a place by its tablecloths.

You would think, for example, that the humble Northwest Side store and taqueria where Enoch and Lopez kicked off a recent inspection run might fare worse than the upscale Polish place that followed. But guess which one survived?

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[Bentley Green]

There WAS on the local and nat'l nightly news a while back that a Burger King eaterly in New York City was immediately ordered to close because there were rodents running around all over the place there!

They were shown on TV. People had complained and the sight of that many uninvited guests trolling and spamming the place and leaving rodent droppings everywhere was enough to make someone sick and never want to go in there again - even if they DID clean up their act and reopen.

I wouldn't!!

[BerryBaby]

We can go to the local board of health website and you can pull up all the restaurants and check out their scores. I did that once and the ones we go to, did pretty well. Would have probably freaked if they hadn't.

[bakerman]

These places know the rules, they know that they are subject to surprise inspections, but they still let grime build up, I don't care if the guy pays $32,000 in taxes or not, that doesn't give him the right to put his customers health at risk.

I have worked in food service most of my adult life and you have to keep a tight cleaning schedule to stay ahead of it, especially if you do a high volume of business. Working in grocery retail, we have a very tight schedule, barely enough time to get everything done, but cleaning is a huge priority.

We never freak out and start cleaning like crazy when the health inspector comes, because we have check off lists and temperature charts that are religiously filled out so we know exactly where we stand at any given time, it's all about organization and good management.

[cyberdoc]

When I was an Independent Duty Corpsman, I did food service sanitation inspections, and oh the stories I could tell you all.

[BerryBaby]

We would probably cringe and not want to go out ever again.

[Food Network Fan]

If there is any advantage to not having a lot of places packed into a city block I guess that would be one for living here. I imagine it's rough in big cities even if you are super clean to not be invaded thru common walls if someone else isn't.

[Bentley Green]

As I stated a while ago in another thread that touched on this subject, bad publicity usually comes from unsafe and unsanitary conditions, as well as poor service.

They are an eatery owner's worst nightmare, and could lead to being forced to close its doors per order of the health dept., high-profile embarrassment and a very bad rap and possible lawsuits.

No one would want to eat there again, and even if they did, there's always that debacle stuck in the back of one's mind that it could happen again.