What's Behind the Kitchen Door?

Have you seen this video? 

It is the famous undercover KCBS news story from 1997 that exposed the dirty truth about restaurant sanitation in Los Angeles.  The footage shows cockroaches crawling over food, rat infestations, spoiled food, and disgusting and unsafe practices by the people preparing the meals.  Workers are seen washing their hands over meat that is defrosting in a sink.  An employee bathroom goes for weeks without ever having soap for washing hands.  Produce is seen rotting to the point that it turns to mush when picked up.  Employees are caught on tape eating from customer’s plates as they prepare the food.  One clip shows a man licking his fingers and continuing to use his hands to prepare a meal.  In another, a man sneezes and continues preparing food.  The conditions exposed in the news report are scary to say the least. 

            The report received a lot of attention and created political pressure to make changes to the existing county health inspection process.  In the days following the report, 18 restaurants were forced to close their doors while they made improvements.  Restaurants that had repeatedly failed inspections or had not been inspected in years came under scrutiny.  The most interesting part is that many of the restaurants were well-established LA landmarks.  Places like Canter’s Deli on Fairfax were among the 18 restaurants that were closed.  In fact, Canter’s was one of the restaurants that were caught by undercover cameras in the news report with rodent droppings, cockroaches, and a history of hygiene violations.  There was a sense of shock across the city by the findings. 

            In addition, the news reports exposed faults within the county’s health department.  While the county claimed that there was simply not enough funding to efficiently conduct inspections, the report found that the health department had millions of dollars left over at the end of each year.  In fact, the millions in surplus money was amounted through fees charged to restaurants by the department for conducting inspections. 

            The changes made to the health inspections process have been effective.  Restaurants are now subjected to a minimum of 4 random inspections per year.  It also became mandatory for the results of the inspections to be posted at the entrance with a letter grade.  Having first hand experience dealing with restaurant health inspections I can safely say that while not perfect, it is very easy for a restaurant to not earn an A from a range of violations that don’t affect sanitation.  With that said, even with the new inspection system a health inspector recently expressed her concern of eating at some restaurants. 

            Seeing the news report creates concern over the hygiene level of the food being served from mobile food trucks.  With very little oversight and not being inspected like normal restaurants I would not be surprised to see similar findings in this industry.  While their changing locations make it difficult for health inspectors to conduct inspections, it is more important than ever to tackle this problem.  Additionally, it would create more consumer confidence in the quality of food being served off these trucks.  

Online Dating

            Have you ever tried finding your soulmate online?  I recently used delicious.com, a new social bookmarking site, to find someone with similar interests.  The website allows you to search sites using the tags that have been bookmarked and added by other members.  For my purposes, I searched using the keywords: “restaurants,” “food,” and “Los Angeles.”  Looking through the almost two thousand results and trying to find another member that has similar interests as me based on there bookmarkings proved to be difficult.  I would find someone that stood out from the rest only to find that the rest of their bookmarks had no resemblance to my search criteria.  I was losing faith, until I came across the member “onefoodguy.”  (I mean, he better have some interesting food links with a name like that.)  If it weren’t for his name I most likely would not have checked out his other bookmarks.  Unlike other members, onefoodguy doesn’t include notes or a long list of tags with his bookmarks.  With almost 350 bookmarks, this member adds a new bookmark two to three times a week.   Among his top ten tags are  “food,” “recipes,” “foodblog,” and “restaurants.”  Perfect match huh? 

            His latest bookmark was particularly interesting, “The 100 Greatest Cult Restaurants in America: Top 20,” from Poor Taste Magazine.  Why?  Because some of my favorites made the cut.  Wurstkuche was ranked at #17 and Father’s Office came in at #14.  Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles came in at a respectable 11^th place.  The highest ranked restaurant from Los Angeles was Pink’s Hot Dogs (although I may draw serious ridicule for this, I have never been able to understand the Pink’s phenomenon).  Overall, it was interesting to see some of my favorites included in this ranking. 

            Continuing to browse through onefoodguy’s bookmarks, I cam across a link for a blog titled “The Great Taco Hunt: dispatches from the taco industrial complex.”  Just like on the previous site, I was interested to see if my favorite local taco truck received any attention.  I didn’t have to look far, the latest blog entry from last month ranked the author’s top ten choices.  “La Isla Bonita” is a traditional taco truck that has been feeding the locals on Rose Ave. in Venice for decades.  One of the original “roach coaches,” unlike the recent reincarnation of food trucks, it is one of the best choices for quick lunchtime Mexican food on the Westside.  There aren’t too many taco trucks where I would be comfortable ordering Ceviche, but this is one of the best and often sells out.  However, it surprised me that La Isla Bonita barely made the list coming in at 10^th place.  I will definitely have to check some of the other taco trucks that received higher rankings.