As easy as 1, 2, 3
Elise knows that I used to read the restaurant gradings at the LA County’s Dept of Public Health’s food facility rating page for kicks. Or rather, for the horrors. After a while, I had to stop because, well, I don’t need to explain, do I? Today’s LA Times tries:
And snapshots can be misleading: You can’t know what’s happening at a restaurant on any particular day. Just one example: A Pakistani restaurant in the greater L.A. area that we won’t name has an A rating now, and, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health database (www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/rating), it has a recent history of sailing through inspections with high marks. But the department also reports that the restaurant had to be shut down for three days in May for “vermin infestation” and an undefined “imminent health hazard to public health or safety.”
Likewise, a popular martini bar in Los Angeles that has an A rating now had to be shut down for three days in June for a major cockroach infestation and “gross contamination of utensils/equipment.”
Now, if you read the grading report, you’ll know exactly who those restaurants are. Are you sure? The really gross one is here: the list of the recently closed.
Photo by Kiki Maraschino. And that cone is perfectly A+.
My friend Valerie: “You know why I love you Philip? Because you, like me, wouldn’t let a ‘C’ rating in a restaurant window stop you from going in if it looked interesting”
Me: “Are you kidding me? I got C’s in high school and I know how fabulous I am!”
Felix! You should know that “C” stands for “cockroach” in restaurant signs (although if you read the LAT article, cockroaches won’t make you sick, norvoviruses will – and having had one, they are terrible), while “B” stands for “boil it.”
Oh God, this is reminding me of the photoshop we had done of the little mouse dancing in the Doughboy’s red velvet cupcake!
I have always enjoyed reading the dirty details too. It can be a great diet aid! I will never eat anywhere with a C. I’ll balk at a B, but will occasionally accept it if I just really need/want to eat at a given place.
Even the A rating includes a lot of filth! Ultimately, I must remind myself that exposure to bacteria and disease is what makes us strong, and that we supposedly swallow something like 3,000 spiders in our sleep in a lifetime. After that, I can reach for the pizza….
Elise – believe me, I was thinking of the little photoshopped mouse. That place never reopened again, did it?
Tawny, I got norvo first day on a job and it spread through the place like wildfire. Doorknob, probably. Spiders don’t bother me.
There was a pizza place I used to sometimes be subjected to patronizing due to work colleagues loving it (don’t know if I should name names)… but they had these cork walls, and cockroaches would be constantly racing in and out of them and popping their heads out like playful chimpmunks in a tree.
One time, I set down my purse on the ground and found that I had skewered one on the purse’s foot. This place never displayed a health rating card, but is part of a big chain. For some reason, this never deterred my coworkers from eating there(!?).
Some people don’t care! When I waitressed in NY, the exterminator used to delight in telling us tales of the high-end restaurants that were roach-ridden.