Comments on: Epicurean, Leo’s, The Tombs, and Bangkok Bistro were high-risk violators of D.C. health code in 2009

By: Vox Populi » Seven Georgetown-area restaurants cited as medium-risk health code violators in 2009

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:01:37 +0000

[...] we cataloged the health violations of four Georgetown-area food establishments that had been pegged as “high-risk” by the Health and Regulations Licensing Administration within the last year or so—Leo’s, [...]

By: Hunter Kaplan

Hunter Kaplan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:38:16 +0000

@Mike
thanks for clearing that up – actually makes a lot of sense.

still though, if people are saying “the vast majority” of restaurants regularly have “critical” violations, something is missing either in D.C.’s code definitions or in the city’s compliance processes. “High risk” establishments especially shouldn’t be regular critical violators.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:28:41 +0000

Be careful, you’ve misinterpreted the concept of “risk” here. “High risk” means that the restaurant is more likely to have potential contamination–Epicurean qualifies because it handles raw food, for example. Higher risk establishments are inspected more frequently than lower risk establishments to manage the risk. So a squeaky clean Epicurean with no violations would still be high risk.

The severity of the violation is the critical/non critical piece. This is what you ought to be looking at.

See the food code here: http://hrla.doh.dc.gov/hrla/cwp/view,a,1385,q,572134.asp

By: Hunter Kaplan

Hunter Kaplan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:16:32 +0000

i think the bigger issue is that D.C. Health is using phrases like “critical violations” and “high-risk.” That makes it sound like these violations are serious. If they are serious, I want to know about it – from the Voice, the Hoya, or whoever wants to take the time to do the research and FOIA requests.

If these violations aren’t serious (and we have evidence from Joe C’s dad’s anecdotes that they aren’t) then maybe there needs to be an overhaul of the D.C. Health classification system. Similar systems like the Homeland Security color scale are already being revised…

It seems like restaurants are just cleaning up one time after the inspectors leave and then committing violations until the next inspection, year after year. That doesn’t really sound like compliance to me. Maybe a little bad press will get them to clean up their act for real.

By: Joe C

Joe C — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:34:40 +0000

@Tim I totally agree with you on that.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:31:28 +0000

@ Joe C.
I agree that it’s great to have rules and then just get places up to compliance. That’s totally reasonable.

But I hate it that every single year, the Voice and Hoya inevitably report these things like it’s “investigative reporting,” and they do it in a way that condemns and casts aspersions on the restaurants/food vendors.

By: Joe C

Joe C — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:01:45 +0000

My father has run inspection services departments for both urban and rural areas for 30+ years. Naturally, much of this stuff has come up over dinner conversations etc although I’m no expert. I know from anecdotes that the vast majority of restaurants, especially those w/ buffets and food bars often have these type of violations. In reading these violations, they seem pretty low level, even the high risk ones.

The point of the high standards and frequent inspections isn’t to penalize or shut down establishments but to ensure compliance with the rules. It is a good thing that these establishments are being cited and then complying.

By: Hunter Kaplan

Hunter Kaplan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:53:21 +0000

Im usually all for the Ron Swanson way of doing business, but when it comes to health and safety standards I’d rather have too many rules than too few. While a sushi chef wearing a bracelet is not a big deal 99.99% of the time its that .01% that kills you – or at least gives you norovirus.

By: @Tim

@Tim — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:52:46 +0000

“Tomorrow, we’ll give you the details on the restaurants that were identified as a medium risk or had clean bills of health.”

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:25:17 +0000

Isn’t it a sign that ALL of these places get dinged by health inspectors. I’ve been involved with health inspections in DC. They’re nonsense. Some of the things inspectors pick on are absurd and formalistic rules that don’t reflect the cleanliness or safety of a restaurant, but merely their compliance with overly strict but completely mindless regulations.