Name and shame dodgy restaurants: yes/no?

The_TaxMan said :

Jees people on this very site is one of the restuarants in question

http://the-riotact.com/health-inspectors-catch-up-with-tak-kee/23100

This place has been closed a few times and in each case they put up a sign saying they were renovating the kitchen but of course the kitchen is the same as always so the reno must have been cheap. Also many of the now defunct Saigon Hotbakes were pinged. I have a friend who is an electrician who said that after working in kitchens in canberra there are many many he will will not eat in. Cockroaches in the dough machines of bakeries was his favourite, the machines stop working he gets there opens the inspection plate and out pour the raisons.

This would be fairly standard for a “chew and spew” restaurant. If the food is freshly cooked and scalding hot there is generally no problem. I caught the owner of a chew and spew ransacking the dumpster for discarded vegetables behind a F&V shop adjacent to the restaurant. When I challenged him he said “no worry, I wash them before I cook” If ever in doubt, order a toasted cheese sandwich which was the favourite of commercial travellers 40 years ago.
As the man said, no worries.

fernandof said :

So, why do many establishment fail to pass inspections?

Inspectors will always have suggestions on how some very minor things could be done better and may suggest something that can be rectified on the spot. While technically not a 100% inspection pass, it beats finding nests of vermin in the bag of flour, for example. And you can tell teenage employees to not touch their hair – and to go and wash their hands if they do – a million times, but they do it, because they’re 16 years old and haven’t grown a brain yet.

While we’re at it, we should name and shame anyone who cooks a meal in their own kitchen and ends up sick.

Jees people on this very site is one of the restuarants in question

http://the-riotact.com/health-inspectors-catch-up-with-tak-kee/23100

This place has been closed a few times and in each case they put up a sign saying they were renovating the kitchen but of course the kitchen is the same as always so the reno must have been cheap. Also many of the now defunct Saigon Hotbakes were pinged. I have a friend who is an electrician who said that after working in kitchens in canberra there are many many he will will not eat in. Cockroaches in the dough machines of bakeries was his favourite, the machines stop working he gets there opens the inspection plate and out pour the raisons.

name and shame, and it shouldn’t just be limited to restaurants/serving of food.

ACT Assembly has just passed an embarrassingly weak excuse for a law — requiring that any food business convicted of a food safety breach to be listed on a register and to display a closure notice. That sort of stuff should have been public information decades ago, and it’s no big deal to require it now. Unfortunately, the public will remain in the dark when it comes to the info we really want: the inspection scores. This is info that is publicly available in hundreds of other cities around the world, and there is no excuse for it not to be available in the ACT.

Agree. But I’m wondering when Canberra went backwards? I remember reading in the Canberra Times about a restaurant that was fined decades ago. When did such information become a secret?

Canberra is a small enough place that surely someone knows someone who knows someone who is willing to anonymously post the names of the restaurants that have been fined.

most defianately!! name and shame all the way. by not naming the restaurants we are putting more people at risk

This appeared in The Canberra Times last weekend and they must be having a hard time finding stories of substance at the moment. The pictures conveyed in Saturday’s original news article seem better placed on a tabloid. Heading an article with “We don’t know the name of the ACT’s filthiest restaurant, its suburb nor what it sells… Nor do we know if it’s a restaurant” seems a great way bolster your word count and that with some giant sized cockroaches is a great way to fill the news starved edition that features no less than 38 advertisements over its first 18 pages.
Over 2400 businesses purvey food in the ACT and of those only 7 have been issued with prohibited notices in the last 2 years. Pretty good if you ask me! With less than 0.3% of businesses given these notices I’m fairly certain it’s safe to eat in the city that enjoys the highest proportion of restaurants per capita in Australia. I’d suggest that at 0.3% many of us would be far safer eating out than eating things lurking around our own kitchens and judging by the state of Ms Agnostino’s kitchen featured in Wednesday’s paper, I would be interested to know if such victims of food poisoning would be so willing to have their own home subject to the same scrutiny as the venue they claim to have been made ill by. Fortunately she’d done the washing up before the photo was taken!

screaming banshee said :

Re the salmonella, 30 hours seems a bit of a stretch for first symptoms??

According to NSW Health – http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/factsheets/infectious/salmonellosis.html –
“Symptoms often start 6-72 hours after infection.”

Buzz2600 said :

Having worked in a number of eating establishments back in my uni days, I’d be surprised if there would be very many restaurant/cafes who would pass inspection every time! Being ‘named and shamed’ for minor breaches would be overkill but serious offenders should be outed in the name of public health and safety.

So, why do many establishment fail to pass inspections?