Aren't restaurants supposed to be clean?

[GTRS Fiero]

We went to eat at a Chinese restaurant.  I haven't been to a Chinese restaurant for a year or more, but I guess I forgot just how dirty they are.  First, we ordered at the counter, from a sticky menu that had lots of mis-spellings. Then, as usual, we washed our hands before eating.  At least, that was the intent.  The bathrooms were so filthy, I think we made clean spots where we stepped.

I watched the food be prepared by people who didn't wash their hands before going back to prepare the food, or between handling money and touching food.  Not a hair restraint or glove in sight.

We walked across the sticky floor, sat in the stick chairs at the sticky table, where we were served greasy food.  I always order the same thing, but it never looks the same.  In this case, hot-braised pork looked like breaded shrimp.  The plastic flexware and the napkins were sitting out in trays.  I picked a fork that looked relatively free of fly eggs, and took the second napkin from the stack, wiped off the fork, and grabbed another napkin.

While we ate, I looked at the dusty grease running down the walls, and remembered a larger Chinese restaurant, where the lighting was dim, and at least you couldn't see how dirty the place was.  That place was eventually shut down.

I have to wonder how these places get a Grade A rating.  The experience just turns my stomach.  In China, the eateries have additional features, like roaches and rats, and you can smell feces from the sewer, so this is a bit better.

This place had the fanciful name of #1 CHINA.  The menu included MOO GOO, HAPPY FAMILY, MOO SHU, KUNG FU CHICKEN, HUMAN WOK, SHRIMP LO, and other things that are a mystery to me.

[Fierofool]

There's a Chinese Restaurant here in Auburn, which is our only real restaurant, and it's very clean.  But I can say that from previous behind the scenes at a Chinese restaurant that my partner and I built kitchen fixtures for, sanitation wasn't on the menu.  We disassembled a food prep table and the legs were full of roaches.  We saw a cook drop a chicken on the floor, pick it up and continue to cut it apart and place it in the pan.  We saw food brought back from the dining area, picked through and placed back into the buffet line. 

My partner was good friends with the family and he had no problem in jumping in the owner's face.  Problems eventually got corrected.  Tim was tougher on them than any health department inspector. 

There was a restaurant near me in Winder.  King Buffet.  Buffet style restaurant and it was really cheap.  My brother an some of his buddies were always going there to eat.  I once jokingly told him that the reason their buffet was so cheap is because someone had already paid for the food once, it didn't get eaten and was put back in the buffet.  The restaurant always had a low inspection score.  Being a small county, the health department publishes all inspections in the only local paper we have. 

Sure enough, one day a story in the paper described how King Buffet had been shut down by the health department and the owners had been cited for their unsanitary habits, including recycling food.  They have reopened, but I haven't seen any reports on them.  They would have to improve to get their food service license back, I presume.  I bet they're being watched closely. 

[GTRS Fiero]

We have lots of places here where there is always a question about one thing or another.  One such place is the City Museum.  A friend had gone there as part of a flash mob.  The City Museum knew about the flash mob beforehand, and approved, but it was a secret.  All the flash mob participants were in disguise.  My friend's disguise was building inspector, which is what he does for a living.  Anyway, staff members not in the know were totally freaking out as my friend went about ”inspecting” while awaiting the agreed-upon time and place.  Considering that the City Museum is basically made from trash, who could blame them?  Kindof a cool place.

Maybe someone should visit the Chinese places disguised as a health inspector.

Auburn must be small.  Where I grew up, there was a population of 303 in a nearby city.  They had several restaurants basically all named ”FAMILY RESTAURANT”.  Eventually, a widow built ”Ma's Cafe”, and then there was a diner, imaginatively named ”The Diner”.  The widow had a rough time.  She was in her 20's, and attractive, as I recall.  The men would go there for lunch, which made the wives mad, so the wives wouldn't serve supper, so the men would go there for supper.  The women ran the widow out of town.  I think the row was all because she fixed special meals for each person, put the meals in paper bags, and wrote the names on the bags.  There was always something special in the bags.  A cookie, a mint, or something.  It didn't matter who you were, she would personalize your order; if you didn't like something, you never had to tell her a second time.  While the widow had been married, everyone had told her her food was good, and that she should open a restaurant.  Her kids were a few years younger than I.  I really don't remember much about the ”FAMILY RESTAURANT” establishments, but I guess they were competing with home cooking.  I don't remember anything about the diner.