Two questions:

What is the lowest grade a place can have and you still eat there.

And, if a health inspector inspected your own kitchen, what do you think the score would be.

6/10/2008 12:46:29 PM

1)depends on the place (fast food vs full service)

2) probably like a 88 or 90, but only if they were actually watching me cook/prepare otherwise 95 or so

6/10/2008 12:50:04 PM

1)Any 'A' is fine. There have been times when I've eaten at a place with a B, but it's usually where I've already paid for and received my food before noticing the grade and I figure "hell, it won't kill me..."

2)I don't even want to think about that. There are usually dirty dishes in the sink, I'm slack about cleaning countertops and floors, what's lurking in the back corners of the fridge is a mystery... Sometimes I think I'm lucky I haven't gotten myself sick. I've seen kitchens in worse disarray, but I'm not proud of mine.

6/10/2008 1:00:07 PM

i'm not one of those weak people who get sick all the time from places like taco hell...i'll eat off my own kitchen floor, or when i go camping i'll sometimes drop food on the ground and still eat it

moldy? meh, scrape it off and get over it...2 months expired? if it doesn't smell like garbage, it probably isn't

gf won't eat anywhere that's not an A (high or low is acceptable), but i'm really not picky as long as the food's good (which it can be, even with a low sanitation grade)

6/10/2008 1:11:03 PM

I generally eat at places with an A, although I have eaten at a place with a C before.

I never use my kitchen, and its not dirty but Im sure I would get a B if inspected.

6/10/2008 1:17:37 PM

B) Probably an 85

6/10/2008 1:19:37 PM

Sanitation grades dont mean that much to me. Its not hard to get a 88-90 just by having points deducted for things that arent in any way shape or form related to the quality and cleanliness of the food.

But that also rarely happens. Normally when a place gets below a 90, something food related is fucked up

6/10/2008 1:19:46 PM

1) I'd eat at a place with an A or B. They give B's over really picky stuff. The kitchen can be clean and a dirty bathroom would give a place a B.

2) Check this out: http://www.slashfood.com/2008/05/30/get-your-kitchen-graded-by-the-l-a-health-inspector/

6/10/2008 1:23:33 PM

I ate at Ten Ten the day they shut it down back in the day.
I ate at Ten Ten the day they opened it back up back in the day.

6/10/2008 2:14:32 PM

My gf's sister is a health inspector for restaurants. She says that there is all types of shady crap that places will do to cover things up. Most of the time it is stupid amateur stuff that health inspectors discover easily, but it makes you think "if this restaurant is willing to go to these measures rather then just clean up... I wonder what else they do?"

Like this one restaurant was a Japanese steakhouse or something, and the management purposefully set fire to part of the kitchen. It was only a small fire and aside from some charring on the wall or whatever, there wasn't much damage. Every time she tried to deduct points or called them out on something, they tried to blame it on the fire.

6/10/2008 2:20:35 PM

I'm sure everyone in this thread has eaten at Gumby's

6/10/2008 2:30:09 PM

There used to be a pizza joint inside a convenience store (Fast Fare?) on Hillsborough St. called Pinocchio's Pizza. It had a 79 "C" grade on the wall, which I noticed after paying, so fuck it, I ate and didn't get sick. It closed down a couple weeks after I ate there. I think they serve Indian food there now.

My kitchen would be lucky to get a C. I'm pretty careful about raw meat but I don't use hot water much because it takes too damn long to get hot water from the faucet. I handle raw eggs and don't wash my hands afterward. Our towels are bacteria hotels. We clean the countertops maybe every 3 weeks or so. There's always stuff going bad in the fridge.

6/10/2008 4:05:08 PM

Damn, India Mahal on Hillsborough got an 86 last month.

http://www.wral.com/5onyourside/story/3005185/

6/10/2008 4:07:46 PM

Quote :

"I'm sure everyone in this thread has eaten at Gumby's"

pokey stix rule, the secret ingredient was dirt

6/10/2008 4:24:16 PM

Quote :

"i'm not one of those weak people who get sick all the time from places like taco hell...i'll eat off my own kitchen floor, or when i go camping i'll sometimes drop food on the ground and still eat it moldy? meh, scrape it off and get over it...2 months expired? if it doesn't smell like garbage, it probably isn't"

6/10/2008 4:29:48 PM

Quote :

"Damn, India Mahal on Hillsborough got an 86 last month."

That place has pretty bad Indian food anyway.

6/10/2008 4:31:59 PM

^ truth

1) I generally don't like seeing any lower than an 85. That said, I did eat at Gumby's.

2) My guess is around a 90. I'm pretty good about washing dishes, countertops and kitchen towels.

6/10/2008 5:32:55 PM

I worked at a place with mold in the ice (among other dirty things) and got a 96, i'd be scared of anything under a 90...

6/10/2008 10:57:36 PM

^ Yeah that's the thing about those grades, you don't know if they got a bunch of little stupid points marked off (employee drinks not in the right place, etc) or if they got one really big thing wrong (raw meat sitting on top of raw vegetables that won't be cooked).

Quote :

"My kitchen would be lucky to get a C. I'm pretty careful about raw meat but I don't use hot water much because it takes too damn long to get hot water from the faucet. I handle raw eggs and don't wash my hands afterward. Our towels are bacteria hotels. We clean the countertops maybe every 3 weeks or so. There's always stuff going bad in the fridge."

This sounds like my kitchen

Worst place I ate at was a tie between a BBQ place with a C out near the beach (consequently some of the best BBQ I've ever had) or the Vietnamese restaurant on Capital Blvd that had the lowest C possible.

6/10/2008 11:39:12 PM

the grades dont mean much to me...i use to run a a store back a couple years back, and you can get pts for little stuff. I had 5 pts taken off once because one of the drink nozzles was cracked. As long as its like a 85 then im good.

6/11/2008 1:12:48 AM

^Yeah that's the shitty thing, a lot of problems have nothing to do with the food or its preperation. If you're a B or better I'm ok (most places I go to have at least a low A though), but I do have a stomach like a goat.

6/11/2008 1:20:00 AM

^^ Yeah, I used to manage a restaraunt and health inspectors are some real shitkickers. I understand they're doing their job, but they find the stupidest shit to bust you on.

6/11/2008 10:13:15 AM

In NC, we're lucky to have public health grades. A few interns I've worked with were from Michigan and their restuarants do not have required sanitation inspections so its up to the manager with it comes to that. They said that they have never seen cleaner restuarants until living here!

6/11/2008 10:43:00 AM

the grades don't mean much, a lot of it is the whim of the inspector

like chipped paint on the wall is the same number of points off as rodent droppings

6/11/2008 10:46:50 AM

Quote :

"I worked at a place with mold in the ice (among other dirty things) and got a 96, i'd be scared of anything under a 90..."

see thats stupid. and i bet there wasn't actual mold IN the ice. if you took the cover off of the ice maker of every restaurant you ate at, you'd find some mold at 90% of them.

i hate health inspection scores. if you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know how screwed up their little scoring system is. insects in the kitchen is scored equally to dirty water in the mop bucket. i worked in a bakery/cafe (ie we would cut on the bread slicers 50+ loaves of bread a day) and we lost points b/c there were crumbs on the counter next to the slicer.

if they really wanted to tell people a place isn't safe to eat, they'd publish a list of the infractions below the score certificate. i don't give a shit if the inspector found some BS to knock a place down to an 85 (we had an inspector once tell my mgr & owner that 'men are not clean enough to run restaurants'), but i care if they lost points cause there was raw chicken on my plate before the sandwich was.

6/11/2008 10:58:41 AM

Quote :

"if they really wanted to tell people a place isn't safe to eat, they'd publish a list of the infractions below the score certificate"

that information is available online.

6/11/2008 11:01:57 AM

I worked at Houlihans in Crossroads a few years back and we got an 80

People would walk in and turn right back around... I still loved to eat there though, I never saw any real uncleanliness or bad food storage, they said we got a ridiculous amount of points off because of broken stoves and multiple cracked tiles in floor and ceiling and for something about the office having cleaning chemicals in it and being right next to the dry food storage.. Got up to a ~93 after they fixed them. We did "marry" condiments, something I thought is a shitty practice.

hahaha good times at that place though.

6/11/2008 12:05:08 PM

Quote :

"Vietnamese restaurant on Capital Blvd that had the lowest C possible."

pho cali? that place is never what i would call clean. but i fucking love pho, so whatever

6/11/2008 12:23:59 PM

^we've not felt so great the last couple times we went there, which is unfortunate since it is moderately tasty. I like that place on Avent Ferry though, by the book store, what is it ? Dalat?

6/11/2008 3:45:41 PM

sanitation grades are ridiculously overrated

even a super-clean place can make you sick

i go where the food's good and don't worry about anything else

6/11/2008 3:55:59 PM

^^^ hahaha yeah that's the one. I know it got closed down at one point but they reopened soon after.

I actually found an even better pho restaurant further down on Capital called Green Basil. I love their avocado bubble tea.

Also for anyone in RTP there's an awesome Vietnamese restaurant over there too. It's called 9N9.

6/12/2008 9:28:00 AM

I'm sure it's been said in this thread, but people just assume that "sanitation score" actually has all to to do with sanitation. In reality, it has some to do with sanitation, but a lot more to do with things like general upkeep of the building.

6/12/2008 1:34:16 PM

The lowest grade possible is probably whatever Sakura Express has....with that said, I still ate there twice a week when I was in school

6/13/2008 9:06:05 AM

When I worked at Outback on Capital, we had a 97.5 (damn 1/2 pt taken off b/c of an open and EMPTY styrofoam [sp?] cup sitting on the BAR)...WTF! Those damn health inspectors don't play any games. I've seen PLENTY of ppl (especially OLD ones) walk in and inquire about the 97.5 and how it used to be 98.5 and 99 months prior and then turn right around and walk out. WTF do they expect?!?!


But the worst I've seen was a 79....we damn turned RIGHT around and kicked rocks. Felt like we needed to Lysol ourselves down when we left that HOLE-IN-THE WALL joint.

6/13/2008 3:09:04 PM

The same inspectors do pools, and there is no consistency at all. I would imagine that grades at restaurants are similarly subjective.

6/13/2008 5:36:17 PM

how often do they come by a place? is it quarterly?

when i worked at a nightclub, our kitchen was nasty. we got a B for a while and the managers were always hiding the certificate.

6/14/2008 3:42:53 AM

^^ I do know if you piss an inspector off they will shit on your chest for every inspection after that. I had a friend who worked for Uno's and their boss tried to hide their sanitation score by strategically placing a potted plant so it obscured the C grade. A disgruntled employee tipped off the health department and they flipped out. Now that restaurant has to be sparkling whenever the woman comes in or they're guaranteed a B if not lower.

^ They're supposed to be inspected once a year if they have an A. If they get below an A they're giving a period of time to remedy the problems and get reinspected.

http://wake.digitalhealthdepartment.com/

6/14/2008 8:04:20 AM

Is the new Gumby's open yet? Saw the sign on my way into work (their site has the new address listed). If anything, it's WAY closer to campus.

7/2/2008 10:51:54 AM

If it is a BBQ place a B grade is acceptable.

7/2/2008 12:25:27 PM

its bad when you go to a sandwich place (jersey mikes) and you have to remind the sandwich makers to use gloves

7/2/2008 3:04:57 PM

^^^ No. I walked by there yesterday and it was open yet. From the looks of the interior, I'd say it will be at least another month before it's up and running.

7/2/2008 3:11:10 PM

^^Oh my god they didn't use gloves???

7/2/2008 3:14:23 PM

Gloves are stupid. It's hard to handle food with them on and they touch everything your hands do, except you don't wash the gloves a million times a day like you do with your hands.

And health inspectors are trifling bitches.

7/2/2008 3:31:17 PM

germaphobia will accelerate the downfall of america

7/2/2008 3:48:37 PM

Health Inspectors will take off points for stuff like if a kid spit gum into the water fountain or a customer didn't flush a toilet 5 minutes before they inspected those places.

Also it depends when the Health inspector comes too. If it is in the middle of the time when the place is preparing food the grade would probably be a whole lot lower than if the place wasn't in the middle of preparing food.

7/2/2008 5:15:14 PM

Quote :

"Carolina Jack’s Steakhouse 4100 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh Score: 81.5 (June 9) Oh'Mulligans 100-108 Jerusalem Drive, Morrisville Score: 85 + 2 (June 11) Huddle House Restaurant 8710-104 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh Score: 85.5 (June 12) Finch’s Restaurant 401 W. Peace St., Raleigh Score: 88.5 (June 12) Sono Sushi Bar 319 Fayetteville St., Raleigh Score: 88.5 + 2 (June 13) Village Draft House 428 Daniels St., Raleigh Score: 89 + 2 (June 10)"

7/2/2008 5:17:19 PM

If there's any place I won't eat at with a B grade it's a place serving raw fish.

7/3/2008 2:25:59 AM

Quote :

"germaphobia will accelerate the downfall of america "

7/3/2008 2:29:14 AM

Pepper's Pizza has a C

I believe it was a 78

I ate there anyways.

7/7/2008 4:07:44 PM

set'em up

Gumby's oh such irony

7/7/2008 4:15:32 PM