My Obsession with Restaurant Inspections

Ever since I discovered the City of Pasadena Restaurant Inspections Web site, I went mad. It's kind of addictive, actually. You can see a complete list of all restaurants that have been inspected over the past several years in Pasadena, complete with a score and definitions of the health violations. Some of the repeat violations are not only boggling, but hair-raising. Just pick any major restaurant and see what happens. I was also surprised that an ice cream establishment had a less than perfect rating. I mean, it's frozen ice cream for goodness sake!

Anyways, my imagination just ends up filling in the blanks, so that makes it worse. Some of the descriptions were fairly vague, so that didn't help. For example, "Food contact surfaces of equipment & utensils" is listed as a violation for a few listings I looked up. Like I said, my mind takes it up a notch, and, well, you never know how dirty or unsafe some restaurants can be.

About a week ago, I noticed a worker at a fast-food restaurant on South Lake Avenue appropriately doing her work with surgical gloves in place. However, once she saw me ready to order, she took my cash and punched in the buttons on the register with the gloves still on. Afterwards, she didn't even remove the gloves but instead, resumed working with the same gloves, making contact with food! Oh. My. Gawd. People are lazy.

There's also this fast-food joint up on Lincoln Avenue, a couple of blocks north of the freeway, that was already suspect when I drove up for breakfast one fateful morning. It was definitely hole-in-the-wall and old-school. There were a lot of unemployed types hanging outside of the place as well, and I'm not talking about the winos or day laborers that are actually trying to find work. I have to say, not everything old-school actually retains quality. For example, Philippe's in downtown Los Angeles has been around for almost 100 years, and the food and the overall establishment is A-okay in my book!

Back to the old-school joint. There's this window to the kitchen inside the restaurant, where you order your food. As you wait, you can actually watch the cook make your toast, eggs and whatever breakfast you desire. I saw the old ship cook-type chef drop a spatula to the floor, pick it up and put it back on the counter next to the grill as if nothing happened. Keep in mind that spatula hit the dingy old black rubber floormat that covered the even older cement floor. The chef may as well have been smoking and tapping out his ashes over the bacon, narrowly missing his worn-out see-through wife-beater tank. Ugh! Need I say I never went back? This place is not far from McDonald's, but I think it would've been better that I went to Mickie Ds. Double Ugh.