I don't know you, Dave H., but you've got me amped

Dave sent me this yesterday: We dream of a time when ostensibly disinterested food critics include in their reviews pertinent information from state health and safety inspection records. Then he says to go here.

It's the first time in 2008 that my gears have been turning at high speed (maybe that says something about the toll my holidays took). At question: Is it my job to evaluate the sanitation of a restaurant?

You go to someone's house for dinner. You see the host and hostess, their dining room, their kitchen, their countertops and dishtowels, cutting boards and burner pans. You see whether they have dirt under their nails. Their personal hygiene is apparent. Not so at a restaurant. Generally speaking, you don't see the man behind the curtain. You can assess the dining room, the service, the bathrooms, the menu AND THE FOOD ON THE PLATE.

I've worked in kitchens. I know some of the less-than-palatable practices that routinely occur. I know when not to order the seafood frittata (see Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential). Because restaurants so often work at a tight profit margin, liberties are sometimes taken with foodstuffs that might not be taken at home with Mom at the helm. After 16 years of reviewing restaurants, I know a few things:

• Not all kitchens are clean
• Not all kitchen workers are scrupulous about hand washing, cross-contamination, storing food at proper temperatures, etc. Many believe in the Five Second Rule (see Julia Child).
• If you eat out often, you will very occasionally get food poisoning. It will probably not kill you.

Next big question: Are health inspections an accurate reflection of cleanliness in a professional kitchen? I have over the years followed a number of well-publicized restaurant closures (such as this one) and I know that there are arbitrary elements to a health inspection. There is an element of chance. It doesn't occur frequently enough to necessarily reflect what a restaurant does or fails to do on a daily basis.

I could go on. Dave, what you've got me thinking is that I should follow along with a local health inspector for a couple of days and evaluate whether they are doing a good job. Then I can assess whether health inspection information is valuable to my readers.

Comments

[Hank]

Well stated Laura! I visited the web site and reviewed several of the violations that had been reported in Dave’s post. “Critical” can mean anything from fire extinguishers not properly labeled to cock roaches near a dish washer. I think if folks have a need to validate the cleanliness of a restaurant, this web site provides ample information. Lets allow the TV stations to keep sensationalizing the few restaurants that demonstrate a lack of sanitary concern.

As for the analogy of visiting some one’s home for a meal, this scares me! How many times do you see someone shopping at the grocery store and they put their groceries in the car and then continue to shop at other locations or it takes them 20 or 30 minutes to get home? What do you think is happening to the perishable food in those plastic bags? For gosh sakes, people still thaw frozen protein in the sink under water or on the counter! Does the average homemaker clean their cutting boards with 160 degree hot water (who has their hot water tank thermostat set at 160 degrees?) and then sanitize?

One of the things that has irked me for quite a while about the Florida process is that unlike an abundance of other states, a given restaurant’s “Sanitation Score” is not posted when you enter. Why not?

End of rant.

[Dave H]

Is it your job to evaluate sanitation inside a restaurant? Not particularly.

The state pays people to do that, though apparently too few of them.

Is it your job to include relevant state-inspection data in your reviews? If you're asking me, yes.

Do you suppose readers don't care whether a restaurant you recommend was substantially fined or temporarily closed by the state a few months prior to your recommendation?

If you have good reason to doubt the veracity of an inspection, do the restaurant and your readers a favor by explaining why.

At the very least, you might at least routinely advise readers where they can find inspection information for themselves, such as http://www.gototell.com/index.cfm?pageid=16 and https://www.myfloridalicense.com/wl11.asp?mode=0&SID=&brd=H

Personally, I don't think it's for a food critic to decide whether restaurant inspections accurately represent conditions inside professional kitchens. How could you possibly know better than an inspector without spending a significantly greater portion of your own time inside the same restaurants?

Even the director of Florida's Division of Hotels and Restaurants has publicly acknowledged that his staff is too thin to adequately inspect all of the state's restaurants.

You say, "If you eat out often, you will very occasionally get food poisoning. It will probably not kill you." That's obviously true and probably always will be but, as your own newspaper reported last year, Florida ranks first in the nation for cases of food-borne illness. Knowing that, I would expect a slightly less sanguine tone from the Times' food critic.

Finally, and respectfully, it seems a bit presumptuous of you to assert that you should go along with health inspectors to evaluate their job performances. Maybe that was a bit of sarcasm on your part.

Either way, why don't you just inject a small dose of old-school journalism into your own work. Report pertinent facts, along with your valued opinions, and let readers draw their own conclusions.

[The Mouth]

I hear what you're saying, Dave. But my problem with reporting the pertinent facts is that sometimes they aren't valuable. Restaurants can fail an inspection for a range of infractions that have very little to do with the overall quality or cleanliness of the restaurant. Improper storage, vermin, serving food past its expiration dates--these are things that warrant concern. But restaurants are cited for all kinds of other, less salient transgressions. The last thing I want to do is create fear among the dining public about restaurants that are doing a good job.

In some states restaurants are given a letter grade by the inspectors, a grade that must be posted in the establishment. I would advocate for a system like this only if I had assurances that the inspectors did a frequent enough, and thorough enough job. Penalizing a restaurant for a whole year for an off day is rough stuff.

[Jimbo]

Have to side with Laura here. Her job assignment is exactly what she's doing, no more, no less.

Many newspapers report sanitation violations in the news pages as they do rezoning for a restaurant addition, celebrity restaurant sightings, and an opening or closing with a particularly high economic impact.

It's like asking the Rays beat writer to cover the hearings in the runup to the relocated Tropicana Field. It's like the Tallahassee bureau writing about the First Lady of Florida's case of the gout. You get the drift.