Anyone who’s eaten anywhere in California has seen the giant colored letters in the front of the building. For those who haven’t, since 2000, California has a ‘public’ food rating system. When I moved here, I thought it was weird at first, but then quickly came to appreciate it; Most places have A’s, you rarely see a B, I think I’ve seen a C once. Never anything less. While the places can’t operate if their score isn’t past a certain threshold, (things like vermin will get you closed, but a small thing will get your score down,) you tend to think twice about eating sushi, for example, at a place with a B rating.
Well I’ve stumbled upon the posted Retail Food Inspection Guide, and sniffed around it, to see what kinds of things people can get away with. Actually I found it because I was following a link through to the acceptable amount of grody things allowed in foods, like animal waste or mold or whatever. This contains all of the pages of things that you can or can’t get away with.
When I worked at Sbarro, my first job evar, I came to the mall once one night I wasn’t working, only to go to the food court and see that the Sbarro I was at was closed for the day. I was confused; it turns out we got closed for health violations. DISGUSTING you say! Well, we didn’t have rats or cockroaches, or mold, or rampant bugs. We got closed because we had a dented can of tomato sauce on the shelf, the meatballs were 5 degrees shy of their required temperature, and the scoop we used to put ice into cups was left in the ice itself. Having worked there for a while, I can tell you that the place wasn’t grubby, but those things were enough to warrant the store being closed until they were fixed.
Ever since thing, I’ve been interested in that kind of stuff, so the Food Inspection stuff in CA has been interesting.
Some interesting things to point out:
Violations range from the obvious:
food handled in a manner that would cause cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat food (e.g., cutting raw chicken, followed by lettuce without properly sanitizing cutting board)
To the less obvious: Consumer Protection/Truth In Menu is a section of the Inspection; if you advertise falsely, you lose points.
improper fat content in hamburger advertised pre-cooked weight of food item is less than advertised “fresh” fish is advertised, but the fish had been frozen a burrito is advertised as “1 lb.”; but the product weighed 14.5 oz.
ENJOY YOUR LUNCH TODAY!
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