Virginia Restaurant Inspections Now Online

[sara]

I'm still looking forward to eating at Ray's, in spite of this:

Arlington Health Dept

I'm sure you could find a similar report on many good restaurants though. I found similar reports for Maestro, for example. Yeah, I got too much time on my hands...

Edited June 12, 2004 by sara (log)

[Mark Sommelier]

I'm still looking forward to eating at Ray's, in spite of this:

Arlington Health Dept

I'm sure you could find a similar report on many good restaurants though. I found similar reports for Maestro, for example. Yeah, I got too much time on my hands...

Um, thanks Sara, I think.

[otello]

What's a closet without skeletons?

On that note, who's up for grilled steaks at my house?

[morela]

I'm still looking forward to eating at Ray's, in spite of this:

Arlington Health Dept

I'm sure you could find a similar report on many good restaurants though. I found similar reports for Maestro, for example. Yeah, I got too much time on my hands...

Time to Raise the Stakes, I guess...

[Minister of Drink]

I'm still looking forward to eating at Ray's, in spite of this:

Arlington Health Dept

I'm sure you could find a similar report on many good restaurants though. I found similar reports for Maestro, for example. Yeah, I got too much time on my hands...

Arlington County has nothing better to do? As a citizen, I am outraged!! Ray's is fine. Ray's is excellent! Ray's is clean! I would eat in the bathroom at RTS before I would at anyone bloody county property where food is served!!!! Folks, the problem here is an arrogant county government that has grown fat on rising property values and now has more employees to manage everyone's life in the county than it knows what to do with.

angry:

Edited June 14, 2004 by Minister of Drink (log)

[sara]

It's not just Arlington...the whole state of VA is posting restaurant inspections online now...

[WoodleyGrrl]

It's not just Arlington...the whole state of VA is posting restaurant inspections online now...

Thank God they are posting them.

[JPW]

As far as inspection reports go, this one ain't too bad at all. It's not like the place was dirty and the inspector shut them down. The only thing that could make me worry is the food thermometer being 13 degrees off. The rest of it is nit-picky crap that all restaurant inspectors perform.

I, for one, am glad that they do it as it can be a slippery slope from relatively minor food safety violations to serious ones accompanied by a nice E Coli outbreak.

[DonRocks]

Editor's note: sara and I decided this should get its own thread since it involves virtually every restaurant in the state of Virginia.

Here is the website that has information about restaurant inspections.

1) Click on a county or city on the left side of the screen.

2) Click on "Restaurant Inspections."

3) Type in the name of the establishment.

4) Enjoy your lunch.

While this is public information, I would exercise caution against unfairly singling out individual restaurants in this thread.

Have at it!

Rocks.

[clifford]

After reading the Ray's Review, I wanted to see a restaurants inspection in Alexandria that I refuse to eat at, due to the cleanliness of the Front of the House.

My wife and I went into a mexican restaurant on Duke Street to get a drink and some appetizers, and all I wuld do was drink, with some trepidation. The place smelled of stale beer and tequila (which isn't necessarily a negative), but was absolutely filthy.

There were stalagmites (stalagtites?) of dust bunnies hanging from the vents and from the ceiling fan, which apparently was never turned on. These things had to take months to accumulate!!!!! The plates were chipped and worn, the glasses weren't clean. The bathroom almost made me dry heave. Their review is far less egregious than Ray's.

Now, I have been in the F&B industry for 10 years in several states, and Health inspections, which should, by definition be rigid, comprehensive, and consistent, are some of the most subjective things I have ever encountered.

I personally have been the beneficiary of Health inspectors who had my inspection finished BEFORE THEY WALKED IN THE DOOR. I have seen Health Inspectors take 0 minutes, 15 minutes, and the half a day to complete the same inspection. The health code, when followed to the letter, would shut down 70% of restaurants, if not more.

Is it a public service to post these inspections on the internet? Sure. But as a restaurant veteran and a compulsive clean freak, you'd be better off trusting your instincts, rather than these reports.

[hannnah]

Bear in mind that every single sushi restaurant, plus everywhere that sells carpaccio, ceviche, raw oysters, or any other form of raw meat or seafood product automatically gets a critical violation for serving undercooked food. That includes Maestro, Inn at Little Washington, and Tachibana, none of which could be accused of mishandling ingredients.

Our previous go-to Thai, on the other hand, was cited for repeatedly thawing poultry in the sink overnight. Eww. We don't go there anymore.

Also, lest anyone think that VA has only just started releasing these, the Post links to them every week from the restaurant inspection report in the Metro and local Extra sections - they've been online for over a year. And it's not just an Arlington county program, it's statewide.

[sdelgato]

Give any idiot with a basic college education a test and they can become a "sanitarian" They have little concept of the real world. My favorite ding is using "used" plastic (like the ones sour cream come in). Legally they must be thrown away or recycled. Huh. If they are sanitized whats the difference? I am not, however condoning filth, but to write restaurants up for minutia makes one wonder if our tax dollars are being wasted by idiots. Wait a minute, government...idiots... Nevermind.

[Steve Klc]

Sara, Don, thanks for posting these links because I think it is important for everyone to come to better grips with the meaning of this, to better understand and put in its proper context: this is another facet of running a restaurant and another aspect of what it means to be a food professional--albeit a vital one but one that the public too often overlooks or misunderstands--we're often too apathetic or too underaware. We susceptible to being distracted by celebrity, the Food Network or glossy magazines--but when you work in food professionally you begin and end with working cleanly, safely and efficiently. You have to do things in volume when you work in food and you are asked to assume a huge public responsibility--perhaps even an unrealistic one: any executive chef has to oversee, train and motivate a large staff many of whom not making much more than minimum wage and to ensure proper food handling in everything they do, all the time, day in and day out. Given that, it's unrealistic to expect any restaurant NOT to get cited for violations. You know, in good places, it is almost like the military--you get smart experienced people to set up a system, you install smart caring professionals to oversee that system, you run that system to the letter of the law day in and day out, it's very robotic and when it functions well there's very little room for error. Everything smells clean, surfaces are wiped, corners are swept, nothing is under the counter that shouldn't be there, everything is properly labelled, everything is warmed and cooled properly, etc.

And even those excellent places receive "critical" violations from time to time.

On any given day in any place, it's naive to think things don't go wrong--timing is off, pressures mount, problems have to be solved on the fly, equipment goes on the fritz--and this happens to some extent in every restaurant high and low. From Citronelle to Zaytinya to Ray's the Steaks to Maestro to the corner deli or Thai takeout. The chef walks by, takes one look at the macaroons you've just taken out of the oven, says they are "sheet," takes the whole sheetpan and dumps it into the trash in front of you, and says make them again. Now you're behind, have to press, weigh out ingredients all over again and crack another 64 eggs, yet still have to work cleanly and safely and catch up. You don't wipe up that little bit of egg white on the counter before you put the macaroons in the oven. Your dishwasher has to leave a little early to catch the first of two buses he has to take to pick his kids up and the floor under the counter doesn't get swept or he asks someone else to wipe out the sink and that person doesn't do it. And on and on.

The inspector happens to be there and sites you for the trash can momentarily obstructing a hand sink, for not having a test kit to make sure there's enough chemical solution in your wet rag bucket which you used to wipe up that egg white. Every restaurant gets violations, the thing to look for is improvement from inspection to inspection.

It's a good thing we're subject to surprise inspections--of which there are many horror stories, closings and of which this one specific report linked to isn't even close to being representative of. You get cited, most require making minor adjustments--replacing this, reorienting that so it cools faster, you move on and keep doing what you're already doing very well--except you do it just a little bit better. These inspections help keep everyone honest and encourage changes be made more quickly than they might be made otherwise. But because of the numbers and resources involved the restaurant inspection program is more akin to the USDA meat inspection program. As a diner you still have to trust your own senses about the level of commitment and caring and professionalism of the places you frequent--and honing that sense is perhaps even more important than any snapshot of an inspection.

Anyone know if all the other jurisdictions are online as well?

(And by the way, being in the biz, having been in a lot of kitchens around the country, and eating at Ray's the Steaks regularly: if every chef, or "cook" as Mike sometimes like to refer to himself as, cared as much as he does, and runs as clean a ship as he does, we'd all be much, much better off.)

[sara]

I believe there's a TX jurisdiction online--I saw something on the TX board.

[The Doctor]

Hello all,

I see aboe there's mention of reports in the Post? Do they have these online? I couldn't seem to track anything down. About 95% of my dining is done in the district, so I'm curious to see reports on those places.

[hannnah]

They usually appear online in one of the county Extra sections on Thursdays. Unfortunately, it's not always in the same one every week, so it's easiest to search on "health code violations."

Here's the link to the September 9 health inspection roundup.

[The Doctor]

Thank you hannnah! This is much appreciated. In return, all I can give is a smile: