Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Josh here, and for this week's Select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our episode on Restaurant Inspections. It may just
Speaker 1: put you off eating at restaurants, ever again, I know
Speaker 1: it did for me. I haven't eaten in a restaurant
Speaker 1: since we released this episode, and that was back in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Hold on, hold on, everyone, I'm sorry. Huh okay, everyone,
Speaker 1: Apparently that is not true. I do still eat at restaurants.
Speaker 1: Who knew? But at any rate, I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: the stomach churning Select. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
Speaker 1: Jerry Rowland. Put the three of us in the room
Speaker 1: together with some raw chicken and some old mop you
Speaker 1: got yourself stuff.
Speaker 2: You should know.
Speaker 1: It's so gross, So Chuck, have you ever been to
Speaker 1: a restaurant and seen something that you weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: see and been like, oh, I just ate here.
Speaker 2: I used to work at restaurants, as you know, and
Speaker 2: you know some of them were pretty gross.
Speaker 1: I worked at a couple myself, and I never saw
Speaker 1: anything that I was like, this is wrong, But I
Speaker 1: realized over the years that I'm in the minority in
Speaker 1: that sense. Dude.
Speaker 2: My first job as a busboy, that was one I
Speaker 2: saw some of the most horrific things in my life,
Speaker 2: mainly because they had Oh man, it was the people
Speaker 2: that worked there. They were dirty folks. They were dirty folks,
Speaker 2: and they were just they were people that didn't care
Speaker 2: about their own personal health and hygiene in any way.
Speaker 2: It was all gross, gross. Gross. I saw a guy
Speaker 2: when time should I even say.
Speaker 1: This, yes, please dish.
Speaker 2: And you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that
Speaker 2: are gross, like drop high school dropouts and hey, I'm
Speaker 2: not knocking you. If you dropped out of high school, Okay,
Speaker 2: go get that ged and keep at it. But these
Speaker 2: were not those people. They couldn't they couldn't even spell
Speaker 2: ged right.
Speaker 1: They're like, I didn't get my kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So these people, they were gross people. And I
Speaker 2: was thirteen and I couldn't speak up. I didn't know, like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go to the owner of the
Speaker 2: restaurant at thirteen because he didn't care. But I saw
Speaker 2: one of these dishwashers go into a walk in cooler
Speaker 2: and he was so mad about the schedule that they
Speaker 2: put him on. He took the lid off of a big,
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen gallon pot of Brunswick stew and he
Speaker 2: put his his showed foot and leg into it, no
Speaker 2: all the way to the bottom, and then took it
Speaker 2: back out. And let me tell you, man, those shoes.
Speaker 2: I've never had more disgusting clothing in my life than
Speaker 2: the clothes that I worked in at a barbecue restaurant.
Speaker 1: I know. They're like the whole reason crocs are in
Speaker 1: business is because it's the only thing that won't slide
Speaker 1: across the greasy, dirty floor of every single restaurant in
Speaker 1: every single city in the entire world.
Speaker 2: Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat
Speaker 2: on the ground and say good catch and laugh and
Speaker 2: then pick it up off the floor. It was like
Speaker 2: it was like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, The Jungle, like
Speaker 2: right before my little thirteen year old eyes, I grew
Speaker 2: up on that job. In many many ways.
Speaker 1: The only way that it could have been more like
Speaker 1: The Jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick
Speaker 1: stew and they just kept them in there.
Speaker 2: It was so foul dude, that's crody. Man, I even
Speaker 2: know what our restaurant inspection score was.
Speaker 1: I didn't even I saw nothing like that at the
Speaker 1: restaurants I worked in. I worked at a handful of them.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I worked at a bunch more was nothing like that.
Speaker 1: This was so that was the worst of the worst.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're all burning in hell. Now, that's
Speaker 1: so grud.
Speaker 2: I drove by that place the other day on the
Speaker 2: way to Emily's parents. I want a different route now.
Speaker 2: It's like a chee cheese a title max okay, which
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: You can pawn your car title there for extremely exorbitant
Speaker 1: interest rates.
Speaker 2: Gotcha? Well, the ghosts of of Rednecks passage well within
Speaker 2: those floors.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, was the barbecue any good? I guess it's
Speaker 1: a moot point, right.
Speaker 2: I still ate there?
Speaker 1: Oh, dude, after the shoe thing, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, I didn't. I was a kid. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I didn't have Brunswick stew that day, okay,
Speaker 2: good or ever again, I don't know. I just I
Speaker 2: didn't know any better. I was dumb.
Speaker 1: You ate the Brunswick stew chuck, didn't I.
Speaker 2: Got a lot smarter after that.
Speaker 1: Well, I again, I've never seen anything in person, but
Speaker 1: I have I've been on the internet and seen things
Speaker 1: like that guy who peed in the coffee apparently every day,
Speaker 1: but I think that was at an office, not a restaurant.
Speaker 1: There's like this laundry list of fingers being found in food.
Speaker 1: I saw an article I think on like MPR something
Speaker 1: and it was like just basically the top five times
Speaker 1: fingers were found in food at restaurants and it happens
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just quickly, I should say that there. I feel
Speaker 2: bad for restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that
Speaker 2: that it's not like some nice kind of place in town.
Speaker 2: You can do all you can do, but you still
Speaker 2: can't account for some little jerk employee that's mad about something,
Speaker 2: that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. Yeah
Speaker 2: you know, yep, you can't. Just you can't watch everyone
Speaker 2: one of the time. And that's usually what is a
Speaker 2: case like that, Like this dumb dishwasher kid, he just
Speaker 2: goes in the walk in says watch this.
Speaker 1: Right, and there's there's I saw like there's a case
Speaker 1: to be made then for not hiring young people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you hire people who have built a background for themselves,
Speaker 1: like a career for themselves.
Speaker 2: All right, those are called good restaurants, right, that's the difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that is the difference. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's very much the owner's fault for being a cheap
Speaker 1: bastard and hiring people who put their shoed foot in
Speaker 1: the Brunswick stew Okay, so my point is this chuck
Speaker 1: that the shoed foot fingers in the uh at RB's like,
Speaker 1: all these little things that are just horrible and horrific
Speaker 1: and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly more frequent
Speaker 1: were it not for a lone group of people, the
Speaker 1: thin blue line between us and utter chaos when it
Speaker 1: comes to restaurants. The Health inspector, Yeah, this was I'm
Speaker 1: so excited about this episode. Yeah, oh it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a good one.
Speaker 2: Man, Like, I don't know when you send it over,
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, But then it started reading
Speaker 2: and it was interesting and awesome and there's history to it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and one of these consumer advocacy shows that we love
Speaker 2: to do. We're doing our little rough Nator impression.
Speaker 1: Man, I love that guy. Great Amazica he's the tops.
Speaker 1: So restaurant health inspectors are something of a newish invention.
Speaker 1: They're certainly not really old, because at least in the
Speaker 1: United States, it wasn't until that book you mentioned, The
Speaker 1: Jungle was published in nineteen oh five that people like
Speaker 1: really sat up and took notice, and Congress acted almost
Speaker 1: immediately past the Pure Food and Drug Act the next year.
Speaker 1: That's the impact that Upston Sinclair's The Jungle had, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Rightfully so.
Speaker 1: And in the book, I mean he went undercover. He
Speaker 1: was a muckraking journalist, God bless him, and he went
Speaker 1: undercovered to basically just take notes on all the horrible
Speaker 1: things he saw in the meat packing industry and slaughterhouses,
Speaker 1: and he chronicled all the inhumane things that he saw
Speaker 1: in the way the animals were treated, but he also
Speaker 1: saw the inhumane ways the workers were treated. But this,
Speaker 1: his book, had this impact, and Congress actually acted and
Speaker 1: they created the Pure Food and Drug Act, And one
Speaker 1: of the things that came out of that was what
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Food Code. And the
Speaker 1: food Code is basically like, here are the things that
Speaker 1: you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent from
Speaker 1: running a foul of the law or creating food borne illnesses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like previous to the states were kind of
Speaker 2: taking care of their own health issues as best they
Speaker 2: could on their own. But then when that book came out,
Speaker 2: people were like, wait a minute, their ship and meat
Speaker 2: across state line. So the states aren't taking care of
Speaker 2: it themselves, meant going out everywhere. So it became a
Speaker 2: federal a federal thing to be regulated, and they.
Speaker 1: Made a federal case. O.
Speaker 2: Well they did, and along with the Pure Food and
Speaker 2: Drug Act, very importantly, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was
Speaker 2: passed in that same year. And because I think everyone,
Speaker 2: I mean even back then, like if you're grossed out
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh six, then they weren't as sensitive as
Speaker 2: we are today. So there was some gnarly stuff going on.
Speaker 1: Dude, a guy falling into like a hot dog grinder.
Speaker 2: Come on. So the food Code, the early food code
Speaker 2: that is was was sort of kind of the same
Speaker 2: stuff that we see today. Generally, we have refined everything
Speaker 2: over the years with science as to what's truly dangerous
Speaker 2: and not and how it gets dangerous. But even back then,
Speaker 2: they were concerned about like proper meat storage and food
Speaker 2: storage and temperatures of things, and the hygiene of employees
Speaker 2: and the premises themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, what constitutes good practices hasn't changed
Speaker 1: all that much. But to respond to changes that do
Speaker 1: come about that do change best practices or are understanding
Speaker 1: of the science of food boorn illnesses. The Food Code
Speaker 1: was republished every year starting in nineteen ninety three. Every
Speaker 1: two years they updated it and republished it, and then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one they moved it to four years.
Speaker 1: But that to me is like that, friends, is the
Speaker 1: reason we pay taxes, so that there are people who
Speaker 1: are going around finding out the most cutting edge understanding
Speaker 1: of how we get sick from foods at restaurants, and
Speaker 1: then also finding out the exact ways to prevent this
Speaker 1: from happening, publishing it into a book, and distributing it
Speaker 1: to the states who then put it into practice. It
Speaker 1: takes money to do this kind of thing, but that's
Speaker 1: why we pay taxes. And the next time somebody tells
Speaker 1: you that they don't care about government regulations and that
Speaker 1: we live in a nanty state, you remind them of
Speaker 1: what it would be like if they ate out at
Speaker 1: a restaurant without this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those people, we don't need government regulating stuff, all right, sir,
Speaker 2: Then you will be eating eyeball. Right, you'll be eating
Speaker 2: human eyeball In your next Frankfurter.
Speaker 1: I will feed it to you myself.
Speaker 2: So the Food Code today, just like the very first
Speaker 2: one back in nineteen thirty four, is voluntary. It is
Speaker 2: not federal law. It is still up to those states
Speaker 2: to go out and write their own rules. It aligns
Speaker 2: generally with the federal regulations and what the FDA recommends.
Speaker 2: And then it gets a little more confusing because when
Speaker 2: it comes down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no
Speaker 2: federal or state inspector that comes in there. It's the
Speaker 2: city or the county who's going to be carrying this out,
Speaker 2: and they work with the state and then in turn
Speaker 2: the federal government to kind of all be on the
Speaker 2: same page.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, I think it's almost kind of like the
Speaker 1: government's the one who has the funding to go actually
Speaker 1: look around and survey and find the science and put
Speaker 1: these best practices out. But it's the county or the
Speaker 1: city where the where the the rubber meets the road,
Speaker 1: the shoe, the shoe meets the pavement.
Speaker 2: More like where the shoe meets the Brunswick stew.
Speaker 1: That's so rotten. Not the Brunswick stew. That's like one
Speaker 1: of the best things I had at Barbarie.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, shall we. I'm gonna go brush
Speaker 2: my tongue with the toothbrush, okay, and I'll be right back.
Speaker 3: All right, star sho.
Speaker 1: Okay, and we're back and chuck. Let me smell your breath.
Speaker 2: How's that?
Speaker 1: Man? That is nice? Littlesterne, Yeah, if I do, detective,
Speaker 1: Is that Tom's toothpaste you used? No? Okay, what toothpaste
Speaker 1: do you use?
Speaker 2: I use Uh, I'm using Crest right now?
Speaker 1: Which one the orange one?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So the the the color of the packaging is orange.
Speaker 1: But the type of mint it's like called citrus mint.
Speaker 1: But you would never if you didn't see that, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like, oh, this is citrus mint. It's just
Speaker 1: its own type of very pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just use the regular uh, not not the white,
Speaker 2: but I think it's like the blue crests right now,
Speaker 2: pro health, I think, yeah, yeah, pro health. And then
Speaker 2: a dude use the Listerine. Now I've been on that
Speaker 2: for a solid couple of years. Yeah, because it's six
Speaker 2: and one, six benufits in one. Why are we talking
Speaker 2: about this?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Man, we're not even getting paid for that.
Speaker 1: Maybe mine is Maybe mine is aqua fresh. It's either
Speaker 1: aqua fresh or crust, which everyone makes, citrus Mintu's what
Speaker 1: I use. But do you remember aim?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah? What was that?
Speaker 1: So that stuff? I think it's still around. It actually
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes,
Speaker 1: as far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out
Speaker 1: in three different colors like green, red, and white, and
Speaker 1: it was just pretty.
Speaker 2: But it's bad toothpaste.
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not a big fan of it, but
Speaker 1: I love looking at it. How about that?
Speaker 2: I remember that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: All right? So back to food inspection, now that our
Speaker 2: mouths are clean. There are usually three kinds of food
Speaker 2: safety inspections. You got your rag. The one that's done
Speaker 2: on the rag, it's known as a routine inspection, and
Speaker 2: that's the one where they come in might be every
Speaker 2: six months, might be every year and a half or so,
Speaker 2: depending on some stuff. We'll get to here in a bit.
Speaker 2: And that's the one where you go in and you
Speaker 2: just see the thing on the wall that gives it
Speaker 2: the score. That's the one where you're working in the
Speaker 2: restaurant and the owner and the manager freak out. They're like,
Speaker 2: oh god, no, no, they do the second they walk
Speaker 2: through the door. Although I will say in New Jersey,
Speaker 2: where I worked at the store in basking Ridge, New Jersey,
Speaker 2: we were always great. They took it really seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 2: every time the inspector came by, they were like, come
Speaker 2: on in.
Speaker 1: That's the way it should be.
Speaker 2: It's a big shout out to the store in basking Ridge,
Speaker 2: New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Way to go to the store.
Speaker 2: That place is great, and that's how And they had
Speaker 2: a restaurant group and they had like six restaurants and
Speaker 2: they're all done the right way.
Speaker 1: I don't think you could really have a restaurant group
Speaker 1: without approaching food inspection and health standards in that way too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's just dumb.
Speaker 1: Not too And from what I saw too, we also
Speaker 1: kind of did you read that Mental Floss article I sent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So one of the things it's called twelve Secrets of
Speaker 1: Restaurant Health Inspectors. One of the things they've point out
Speaker 1: is that usually the bigger, the chain. So whether it's
Speaker 1: a restaurant group on up to a global chain like
Speaker 1: you know one of those guys, Sure, oh wow, cheeks buddy,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to see something close to one hundred
Speaker 1: every time. And the reason why is because they have
Speaker 1: a lot of skin in the game. They have a
Speaker 1: lot to lose, right if, like they pointed out with Chipotle,
Speaker 1: like there were one or two locations of Chipotles where
Speaker 1: some bad cilantro got some people sick with E. Coli,
Speaker 1: but all Chipotle suffered as a result, people just stopped going.
Speaker 1: They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and came probably
Speaker 1: pretty close to going under there for a little while.
Speaker 1: And I think they're still definitely callling their way out
Speaker 1: from under it. So they don't just rely on state, county,
Speaker 1: or city health inspectors. They do their own. They hire
Speaker 1: their own third parties to come in and carry out
Speaker 1: health inspections much more more frequently than the government's doing,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that they're up to standards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so your your local fast food chain is more
Speaker 2: likely to be super clean than the mom and pop
Speaker 2: in theory, but in my opinion, you're also more likely
Speaker 2: going to find the kid in the kitchen that goes,
Speaker 2: hey watch this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a trade off, and that's that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's definitely not to say that, you know, mom
Speaker 1: and pop places are inherently unsafe. If it's a family business,
Speaker 1: you have just as much skin in the game as
Speaker 1: a global a global restaurant chain because this is your
Speaker 1: family's livelihood. So yeah, you're gonna take it seriously.
Speaker 2: Uh So, getting back, the other two types of inspections
Speaker 2: real quick, besides the routine are the follow up investigation
Speaker 2: where they do say like, all right, you need to
Speaker 2: fix these things. I'll be back next Thursday, or I'll
Speaker 2: be back tomorrow depending on what's going on, right, or
Speaker 2: I'll shut down your restaurant while you fix the stuff
Speaker 2: it's so bad. And then there are inspections that are
Speaker 2: triggered by a consumer plants.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's the one where they like use the bat signal,
Speaker 1: but instead of a bat, it's like a fork in
Speaker 1: the sky and then the restaurant inspector swoops in. It's
Speaker 1: like I'm here, I'm here. Everybody calm down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mentioned that people restaurants will be inspected
Speaker 2: maybe every six months, maybe every year a year and
Speaker 2: a half. They are. It's not willy nilly. They are
Speaker 2: assessed a risk factor as an establishment by the county
Speaker 2: or the you know whatever local municipality is carrying this out.
Speaker 2: And that has to do with a bunch of things.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's the kind of food. Like if you're serving sushi,
Speaker 2: you might get inspected a little more sushi sushi because
Speaker 2: you're serving raw fish. That I didn't say sushi that done,
Speaker 2: shushi that done?
Speaker 1: Did I No?
Speaker 2: No, no, oh no, that's Steve brule, Steve rule.
Speaker 1: Shushy sham whishy.
Speaker 2: That I thought. I thought it was my nising tooth.
Speaker 2: Or if you're cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you
Speaker 2: might get inspected a little more than a deli that
Speaker 2: just has you know, pre prepared meats and foods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like those cold cuts are already cooked. It's not
Speaker 1: like you're they're serving you raw turkey slices like it's
Speaker 1: already cooked. They're just putting it together onto a sandwich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a low risk restaurant comparatively speaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, always gets me, even though I love
Speaker 2: a ero, is when I see the thing on the
Speaker 2: spit next to the heat lamp rotating around, right. I
Speaker 2: always just think, how safe is that?
Speaker 1: I would guess if it's operating in the United States
Speaker 1: safe enough. Okay, that's the whole point of restaurant inspectors,
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to ask that question. That
Speaker 1: you can look at that and say, somebody who knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing has inspected that and determined that is
Speaker 1: not a threat to my health.
Speaker 2: Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it.
Speaker 1: No, I'm with you, I understand. I also want to say,
Speaker 1: there are some places where you go in and you're like,
Speaker 1: this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I
Speaker 1: have no idea how this place is allow to stay
Speaker 1: like this, but it's still worth it. And I would
Speaker 1: direct you to Ann's Ann's Ghetto Burger. Oh yeah, right
Speaker 1: by your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just down the street.
Speaker 1: Yes you have, you had one.
Speaker 2: I've never had an ans because I thought that she
Speaker 2: left and it closed. But it's still going. Is she's
Speaker 2: still running it?
Speaker 1: You know? I don't know. She had been threatening to
Speaker 1: like retire for twenty years or something, but I knew
Speaker 1: she wanted to get bought out and didn't want to
Speaker 1: just close it down. So hopefully she was able to retire.
Speaker 1: That's my hope.
Speaker 2: All I know is the Wall Street Journal said it
Speaker 2: was I think maybe the best hamburger in the United States.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal ain't lying, you know, yes, But
Speaker 1: if you go there, that's like decades worth of Greece
Speaker 1: just on the vent around the or the backsplash, like
Speaker 1: the stainless steel backsplash or whatever splatter guard behind the griddle,
Speaker 1: and you're like, there's how does she how did she
Speaker 1: get away with that? And then you take a bite
Speaker 1: of it and you're like, oh, because it matters not
Speaker 1: at all compared to this burger.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe she is compliant because that is the second
Speaker 2: risk factor involved with how often you're going to get inspected,
Speaker 2: which is if do you have a list of complaints
Speaker 2: or a record of violations on your record, then you're
Speaker 2: gonna be on their frequent visitor list, right you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and especially if you've ever been the source
Speaker 1: of a food born illness, you're on you're a high
Speaker 1: risk automatically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably permanently, yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 1: And depending on where you are, you know, like you're
Speaker 1: going to get lots of visits after that. That's probably
Speaker 1: aside from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a
Speaker 1: food born illness is probably the worst thing that can
Speaker 1: happen in your restaurant. Yeah, I would guess, and you know,
Speaker 1: whether you're a new restaurant, well, if you're a new
Speaker 1: restaurant in particular, I should say I think the standard
Speaker 1: is is that depending on where you fall as far
Speaker 1: as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a
Speaker 1: deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood,
Speaker 1: you're assigned like an initial risk assessment, and then depending
Speaker 1: on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say
Speaker 1: they're gonna come visit every three months for the first year,
Speaker 1: or if you're a deli, they might come once every
Speaker 1: year and a half. And then depending on how you
Speaker 1: perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are
Speaker 1: basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that
Speaker 1: schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say that
Speaker 1: deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently every
Speaker 1: eighteen months, they're going to start getting inspected every twelve
Speaker 1: months or every six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or that.
Speaker 1: Sushi place that's getting inspected every three months or six months.
Speaker 1: If it's just painfully obvious that they are top notch
Speaker 1: pros who are taking this quite seriously and never get
Speaker 1: caught for anything, then six months may end up turning
Speaker 1: into a year. Who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you may have heard reports on the news too
Speaker 2: that food inspectors have racist policies where they will go
Speaker 2: after ethnic restaurants more often.
Speaker 1: No, I hadn't heard that, is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen reports on stuff like that, Wow, that
Speaker 2: they get inspected more frequently if you're like, have an
Speaker 2: ethnic restaurant.
Speaker 1: That's pretty rotten.
Speaker 2: But there is a food safety expert at North Carolina
Speaker 2: State a named Ben Chapman that says there's really no
Speaker 2: data to back that up. He said, but there could
Speaker 2: be biases through consumer complaint systems. Oh and they did
Speaker 2: sort of a just a snapshot from Yelp reviews, which
Speaker 2: say what you want about Yelp reviews, they're pretty much
Speaker 2: the worst thing ever. Right, But if you look at
Speaker 2: Yelp reviews, you do a search for food poisoning, and
Speaker 2: close to seventy percent of the time they were ethnic
Speaker 2: restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. So I see
Speaker 2: this food is weird. I don't recognize it that some
Speaker 2: bias comes in through that.
Speaker 1: But that makes sense. Then Chuck like if if if
Speaker 1: yelp is a proxy for the number of times somebody
Speaker 1: might call in a complaint. That's one of the ways
Speaker 1: that food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant is
Speaker 1: when somebody the public, said, you know, calls and says
Speaker 1: something or complains. So yeah, I mean that that makes utter,
Speaker 1: incomplete sense. Have you ever called and complained about a restaurant?
Speaker 1: Have you ever called the health department? No? I never
Speaker 1: have either, and they're actually after researching this article, I
Speaker 1: was like, there, I can think of it. At least
Speaker 1: one time when I could have and should have called
Speaker 1: just got under cooked chicken, and you mean and I
Speaker 1: both got very sick for like the whole weekend, and
Speaker 1: I kept calling this place like like, what are you
Speaker 1: guys going to do about this? You have to do something,
Speaker 1: and they just got less and less interested the more
Speaker 1: frequently I called them. By the by like the fourth
Speaker 1: or fifth time, I was like, we're still suffering. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to let you know, we're laying around throwing up.
Speaker 1: And they didn't do anything about it. There was no
Speaker 1: We're sorry there. I think they actually didn't believe me. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But now that I've read this, I'm like, I totally
Speaker 1: should have called the health department on those guys, which
Speaker 1: it was in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: I think I remember that. Actually we got.
Speaker 1: So we were sick for an entire weekend. Pretty nice, right, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally remember, right across from where we used to work
Speaker 1: and Buckhead actually, and they could not have cared less.
Speaker 1: And that's what ticked me off.
Speaker 2: Oh you were calling the restaurant over there, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Oh I thought you called the health inspector over No.
Speaker 1: But now now I'm like, why wouldn't Why didn't we
Speaker 1: just call it health inspector? Now I would call for
Speaker 1: sure now that I've done this research, because it's not
Speaker 1: like like what you're doing is helping other people from
Speaker 1: from before, from the same fate.
Speaker 2: Befall, Yeah, you're not being a rat, right right.
Speaker 1: Which is another thing that health inspectors look out for.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about that when you when
Speaker 2: this is how that this goes down. There are unannounced visits,
Speaker 2: like I said, so I've worked at I've worked at
Speaker 2: I don't know, like probably four or five places over
Speaker 2: the years, and two of them were pretty bad. The
Speaker 2: aforementioned barbecue place, and then where I worked in college
Speaker 2: wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a typical
Speaker 2: like college town Mexican joint, but it wasn't like the
Speaker 2: super professional other restaurants that I've worked at. But at
Speaker 2: those first two places, I remember when the restaurant inspector
Speaker 2: walked through the door, a panic set in. Invariably the
Speaker 2: one of the like the GM or whoever the manager was,
Speaker 2: would immediately confront in a nice not confront but greet
Speaker 2: the person and send you know, the understanding was someone
Speaker 2: go back to the kitchen and tell everyone that the
Speaker 2: inspectors here. And judging from that Mental Floss article you sent,
Speaker 2: that's exactly how it works. And for that reason, the
Speaker 2: very first thing a good health inspector does is kind
Speaker 2: of barge through there and say, I'm going straight into
Speaker 2: the kitchen right the second right, because they know what's.
Speaker 1: Going on, right, that's they have to or else a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of violations get covered up really quickly.
Speaker 2: Very quickly.
Speaker 1: And so in that Mental Plus article, basically they said
Speaker 1: they needed to do like a brisk like run walk
Speaker 1: through the kitchen as fast as they could.
Speaker 2: Isn't that scary?
Speaker 1: It is? But you do you you scales, like what
Speaker 1: do you do? And like just stand there and freeze.
Speaker 1: That's what they should do, is be like everybody freeze
Speaker 1: and then like have their finger and thumb in the
Speaker 1: shape of a gun because I don't think they're allowed
Speaker 1: to actually carry guns.
Speaker 2: Well, this one health inspector in the mental plaus thing said,
Speaker 2: we want to see the things that won't be there
Speaker 2: in another three to four minutes.
Speaker 1: Right, But that's the thing. But I mean it could
Speaker 1: be anything like there's there's like if you are sitting
Speaker 1: there making food and you have like a cup of coke, right,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to have that.
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, or in your cell phone in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: It's another big one too. I'll bet that is probably
Speaker 1: the most frequent violation today.
Speaker 2: They're covered in poop.
Speaker 1: Do you ever see something like have you ever just
Speaker 1: stopped and looked at people on the street like with
Speaker 1: their phones, Like they'll just be stopped mid something like
Speaker 1: they have like a shovel like propped up against their shoulder,
Speaker 1: just looking at their phone with their mouth hanging open,
Speaker 1: and it's like crazy, We're turning into like a society
Speaker 1: of zombies. Man, how do you.
Speaker 2: Stare at your phone? I've seen you do that. You
Speaker 2: do it in a smarter looking way.
Speaker 1: I do the thing where I'm like stroking my chin
Speaker 1: thoughtfully right in your mouth closed exactly. I've got like
Speaker 1: one eyebrow arched, all right.
Speaker 2: So the first thing they inspect, obviously the kitchen. The
Speaker 2: manager or the owner whoever is there on point is
Speaker 2: with the inspector the whole time, because they're saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: like little things like that ketchup bottles disgusting, Like why
Speaker 2: don't you go ahead and have someone clean that up.
Speaker 2: I won't dock you a point, right, but just get
Speaker 2: it clean.
Speaker 1: And the guy wipes it down. He's like, no, that brand,
Speaker 1: it's Hunt, So I get some hines in here. It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: But the first thing they inspect are the dynamic areas,
Speaker 2: which are the kitchen food preparation areas. Basically, anywhere where
Speaker 2: there's food actively out is the first place they'll go.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the static area, dynamics.
Speaker 2: The dynamic okay, and then you start with the one
Speaker 2: hundred points. By the way, I don't know if we mentioned.
Speaker 1: That, which I think is kind of optimistic. It's saying, like,
Speaker 1: I want to believe the best thing you So everybody
Speaker 1: starts with a hundred and then we start deducting from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then it just gets sad.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things they're looking for is
Speaker 1: employee hygiene because remember what you mentioned, like way back
Speaker 1: and when the Food and Drug Act was creating, the
Speaker 1: Food Code was first established, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: basic tenets that were put forth back then, and one
Speaker 1: of them was, you're the people who cook the food
Speaker 1: need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the big things that the health inspector is looking for,
Speaker 1: like are they wearing gloves, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: not to say that if an employee's wearing gloves that
Speaker 1: you're totally covered. The gloves are supposed to be a
Speaker 1: fail safe to good hand washing. Yeah, so you want
Speaker 1: them to be washing their hands very frequently and then
Speaker 1: wearing gloves on top of that, but then on top
Speaker 1: of that not doing things like using their cell phone
Speaker 1: with the gloves one, because you've just automatically contaminated them
Speaker 1: and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at that point. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of hygiene things that are being
Speaker 1: taken into account. But how do you tell whether people
Speaker 1: are washing their hands when you're just walking into a kitchen.
Speaker 1: Of course they're going to wash their hands in front
Speaker 1: of you in the way that they're supposed to be,
Speaker 1: but how do you know they're doing it routinely?
Speaker 2: Chuck? Well, yeah, and we should that there is a
Speaker 2: way you're supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse
Speaker 2: them off and just dry them with the towel that's
Speaker 2: sitting by the sink, or just blow on them. You rinse,
Speaker 2: you put on the soap, you scrub for twenty seconds,
Speaker 2: then you dry off with a one use towel.
Speaker 1: And good old, unsustainable made out of tree paper towel.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Or if you're a really fancy restaurant, you
Speaker 2: can just have like cashmere towels laying around as long
Speaker 2: as you throw them away after it.
Speaker 1: Right, you have to throw them away.
Speaker 2: But your little trick, I know where you were leading.
Speaker 2: How you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant
Speaker 2: inspector in the Mental Floss article said, they go in
Speaker 2: the first thing they do because it takes them a
Speaker 2: couple hours at a just sort of a normal sized restaurant,
Speaker 2: four or five hours at a big hotel restaurant.
Speaker 1: M h.
Speaker 2: He said, he puts an X on the paper towels,
Speaker 2: and if he goes back at the end of his inspection,
Speaker 2: then that X is still in the paper towel, then
Speaker 2: he knows hands are not being washed. Right, very sneaky,
Speaker 2: pretty clever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I guess we just gave it away though,
Speaker 1: So now all the people are going to go check
Speaker 1: their paper towel rolls.
Speaker 2: H bet they're other ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was just a setup to nudge them into
Speaker 1: the actual way he's telling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like wash your hands.
Speaker 1: Food is another big one too, right, you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that the food is being properly stored and
Speaker 1: properly cooked. And apparently there is a danger zone between
Speaker 1: I think like zero and one hundred and forty that
Speaker 1: you want to hit or that you want to stay
Speaker 1: outside of. So basically you want your food, especially like
Speaker 1: raw meat, to be stored at a temperature frozen right
Speaker 1: or else kept at forty degrees fahrenheit forty degrees celsius
Speaker 1: or below for fridges, and then when you cook it,
Speaker 1: you have to cook it to at least one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty degrees internal temperature for beef, pork, all those guys,
Speaker 1: and then one hundred and forty five for fish. And
Speaker 1: if a restaurant's not doing that, that's a big that's
Speaker 1: a big one, as we'll see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the best way to think about food
Speaker 2: storage is without getting into the specific temperatures. Is if
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it should be
Speaker 2: cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be hot, it
Speaker 2: should be hot. Is that middle ground is where you're
Speaker 2: in big trouble exactly. They talked about lukewarm being the
Speaker 2: big enemy, right, that's never good lukewarm.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a time when lukeworm is
Speaker 1: preferable with anything.
Speaker 2: It just sounds gross. I like my food really hot too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like That's the one thing I will send something back
Speaker 2: is if it's was clearly made a little earlier than
Speaker 2: the rest of the party at the table and it's
Speaker 2: sort of lukewarm, I'm like, nah, man, I want I
Speaker 2: want steam coming off this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they throw the microwave, yeah they do, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, oh, I guess you want a little
Speaker 1: spit on that too.
Speaker 2: Apparently soup should be like the way you reheat things
Speaker 2: is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick stew, you
Speaker 2: don't just throw it out every night. You put it
Speaker 2: back in the walk in so some jerk can step
Speaker 2: in it. But when you bring soups and brols back
Speaker 2: to heat, you have to reboil them entirely right from
Speaker 2: their refrigerated state.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, but that's never very good for food.
Speaker 1: If it's already prepared, once you reboil it, probably you're
Speaker 1: just gonna want to throw that away then really, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it toughens everything up, or else it over cooks it.
Speaker 1: It's already been cooked once, so when you bring it
Speaker 1: to a boil, you're really cooking it again. And for
Speaker 1: food born illness is that's a good way to treat it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily make for the most appetizing food.
Speaker 2: Right. I don't know if I agree with that, but
Speaker 2: that's all right, that's what I'm going With frozen meat.
Speaker 2: You don't just say, hey, Jimmy, throw that frozen bird
Speaker 2: out on the table and leave it there till this evening, right,
Speaker 2: But you don't just leave food out to thaw. There
Speaker 2: are proper ways of falling and bringing things back to
Speaker 2: correct temperature. Right.
Speaker 1: And then so let's say you have a place where
Speaker 1: you're cutting up that thawed chicken that was properly thawed,
Speaker 1: and then you set the knife down and somebody else
Speaker 1: picks it up and they start cutting lettuce with it.
Speaker 1: That's cross contamination. That is extremely dangerous because as you know,
Speaker 1: very few people cook their lettuce before they eat it
Speaker 1: in a salad. It's raw, and so now it has
Speaker 1: raw chicken juice on the lettuce that you're eating raw
Speaker 1: and uncooked, and you can die from that. So cross
Speaker 1: contamination is a big one they look for. They also
Speaker 1: it can be a little more simple, like with something
Speaker 1: like silverware. From what I saw, if the silverware is
Speaker 1: dirty or smudgie, that is a big problem because that
Speaker 1: means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of that's like a big red flag that apparently
Speaker 1: health health inspectors will will tell you that if the
Speaker 1: silverware is dirty, it usually is indicative of just a
Speaker 1: dirty restaurant in general. Yeah, and I've always heard I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's an urban legend or not. But
Speaker 1: you know, like the just the plastic soda cups that
Speaker 1: like a lot of restaurants will have. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard that it's not possible for them to get to
Speaker 1: the temperature needed to kill any bacteria on them, because
Speaker 1: they'll melt otherwise, so that when you drink out of them,
Speaker 1: they've not really been sanitized from before.
Speaker 2: I have not heard that. But as someone who has
Speaker 2: worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to watch these things at this temperature. You just throw
Speaker 2: everything through there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have any choice in what temperature. It's
Speaker 1: all prescribed for you. You're just basically putting them on
Speaker 1: the tray and sliding them through, pulling the door down,
Speaker 1: and then it washes them and you lift the door
Speaker 1: up and pull them out.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I will say one of my dreams though,
Speaker 2: is to have one of those in my home.
Speaker 1: Those I can't remember what they're called, but they are wonderful.
Speaker 2: It's pretty great. Yeah, it just watches everything like super fast.
Speaker 1: So that's the dynamic areas, right, Yes, there's also the
Speaker 1: static areas where it's things like well, the dishwashing area
Speaker 1: actually apparently is a static area. It doesn't change very
Speaker 1: much where you store cleaning products that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess you get points deducted if your cleaning products
Speaker 1: or your toxic chemicals are not in their marked original package.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not good because.
Speaker 1: You could they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're gonna check. The static areas include a
Speaker 2: lot of things that you don't think would even fall
Speaker 2: into the purview of a restaurant inspector. They're going to
Speaker 2: look at your HVAC systems and your vents and your
Speaker 2: smoke detectors. They're gonna look at your dining room and
Speaker 2: the floors and the ceilings and your ceiling vans, and
Speaker 2: your dumpster behind and your grease trap. Like they look
Speaker 2: at everything.
Speaker 1: Right, which is good. And another one that they take
Speaker 1: a look at that I think is probably a big
Speaker 1: problem for restaurants in a lot of ways are ice machines.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of parts to ice machines that are
Speaker 1: out of view.
Speaker 2: This thing scared me in mental floss now.
Speaker 1: That can like grow mold pretty easy, and not just
Speaker 1: the ice machine right where they're like scooping ice out,
Speaker 1: which is another thing too, Like there better be an
Speaker 1: ice scoop, right, it can grow mold in the ice machine.
Speaker 1: But also those shoots where ice comes out of like
Speaker 1: a like a beverage dispenser, those are usually serviced by
Speaker 1: the company that makes the beverages that it's dispensing, and
Speaker 1: so it would be up to that company to clean
Speaker 1: those out, which means that they get even less attention
Speaker 1: than the rest of the restaurant. So the next time
Speaker 1: you're getting like ice out of beverage dispenser, like, get
Speaker 1: your flash light out of your pocket and look up
Speaker 1: there and see if you see any mold and then
Speaker 1: just raise holy hell if you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm not a big fan of the serve
Speaker 2: yourself soft drink stations anyway, for you know, out there
Speaker 2: with the public. I don't think think the public should
Speaker 2: ever have access to something. That's why, well that's not
Speaker 2: the reason. But buffets are just so gross and creepy.
Speaker 2: I haven't been to a buffet in good Lord, I
Speaker 2: don't know, twenty years, I know, but the thought of
Speaker 2: a buffet, I know they have the sneeze guard, but
Speaker 2: people like scooping in and serving themselves their own food
Speaker 2: from a trough is so weird and gross and archaic
Speaker 2: that I can't believe people still do that.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean also, like even if you're using like
Speaker 1: a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop something out,
Speaker 1: which you are, so did the person before you, right,
Speaker 1: and that means you're touching the same serving spoon and
Speaker 1: then going back and using your hands to go eat,
Speaker 1: So you just touched whatever the other person had on
Speaker 1: their hands, and now you're coming in contact with your mouth.
Speaker 1: It's a flawed system, for sure.
Speaker 2: It is. Because what you're saying is, I'm going to
Speaker 2: count on the three hundred people that have eaten here
Speaker 2: today before me are all completely hygienic. All their hands
Speaker 2: have been washed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Timothy, poop hands isn't among them.
Speaker 2: No one did a single gross thing, like if a
Speaker 2: tater tot fell off the spoon flicked it back in
Speaker 2: with her finger, Like, no one did anything wrong at all.
Speaker 2: I just no way, not even like whole foods or someplace.
Speaker 2: Those are all gross to me.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, whole foods would count with that too, huh.
Speaker 2: Although I do like a build drone salad thing every
Speaker 2: once in a while. That's the exception.
Speaker 1: Good salad bar. Yeah, it's tough to turn down. I'm
Speaker 1: with you. Well, let's take a break, think a little
Speaker 1: more about salads, and we'll be right back. Stuff shit,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back, Charles.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about point deductions. A.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's remember we said that restaurant inspectors are very
Speaker 1: optimistic and they start out with one hundred.
Speaker 2: It just goes down from there.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, since these are done like city
Speaker 1: by city or county by county, like everybody has like
Speaker 1: their own methods or whatever. But usually, and I think
Speaker 1: the FDA has pointed out, like there are five things
Speaker 1: that you're really looking for, like five general categories. Improper
Speaker 1: storage of food as far as temperature goes, yes, inadequately
Speaker 1: cooked food, equipment that's contaminated, sources that are unsafe, that
Speaker 1: are an unsafe supply of the ingredients, right, so like
Speaker 1: if it turns out like the goat is coming from
Speaker 1: their buddies farm, that might be a problem. And then
Speaker 1: personal hygiene of the people who work there right, right,
Speaker 1: And so depending on some of those, especially if there's
Speaker 1: multiple ones of these, these are big ones, they will
Speaker 1: probably be a high priority Type one or critical violation
Speaker 1: any of those, Yes, and then there's also other ones
Speaker 1: where they're like, this is not that big of a deal,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely something that needs to be paid attention to.
Speaker 1: Those fall after those usually, and it can be anything
Speaker 1: from like a dentic can that could conceivably contain botulism
Speaker 1: but definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away,
Speaker 1: to there being a hole in the screen door that's
Speaker 1: left open for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these as far as deducting individual points that
Speaker 2: you'll see on the wall when you walk in and
Speaker 2: if you don't look at that piece of paper when
Speaker 2: you walk into a restaurant, I don't know what's going
Speaker 2: on in your brain. You should always do that, sure,
Speaker 2: But like a static violation like hey, there were some
Speaker 2: chairs that had bad legs, your ceiling fan was pretty dusty,
Speaker 2: those will be like a point each, maybe a couple
Speaker 2: of points for a minor infraction like you're cleaning product,
Speaker 2: like a found a roach. You know, the chef has
Speaker 2: a cell phone in the kitchen. That's a couple of
Speaker 2: points all the way up to four and five points.
Speaker 2: And those that's when you're talking about your your fridge
Speaker 2: is broken and it is not up to temperature and
Speaker 2: everything in there is at risk, and that's when they
Speaker 2: can actually shut you down until you get it fixed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I got the impression from this article that
Speaker 1: that is a it's a rarity that the health inspector
Speaker 1: wants to air on the side of the restaurant staying
Speaker 1: open and solving everything as quickly as it can, while
Speaker 1: also it's business not suffering unnecessarily. So if your restaurant
Speaker 1: gets shut down temporarily, like that violation was significant enough
Speaker 1: that people were at an immediate risk of getting sick
Speaker 1: from visiting your.
Speaker 2: Restaurant, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big deal. In other words, it's as
Speaker 1: big a deal as you would think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but with those point deductions, if you go in
Speaker 2: and you see like a seventy two on a restaurant
Speaker 2: score sheet, it's probably not twenty eight individual small violations.
Speaker 2: There are probably some four and five pointers in there,
Speaker 2: and you should probably think about eating there or you know,
Speaker 2: it says in the art in this article. You can
Speaker 2: go to the website and really break down because those
Speaker 2: aren't for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily.
Speaker 2: But if you do look at them, if you can
Speaker 2: get close to them, you can actually look and see
Speaker 2: the little category for each thing. Sometimes it's behind the register.
Speaker 2: They may not like you poking around.
Speaker 1: Well, the health departments usually put them on the web
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's well saying like you can investigate online, but
Speaker 2: in the restaurant itself it is marked. It's you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of tiny little letters and categories, and you
Speaker 2: can give it a look. And you know, as long
Speaker 2: as I wouldn't spend too much time there, like, just
Speaker 2: go by that initial score, and if you're really like,
Speaker 2: well I got to see what those eighteen points were
Speaker 2: deducted for, I would just turn around and walk out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if there's an identical place, like right across
Speaker 1: the street. Yeah, but that is a pretty good point,
Speaker 1: because when you think about it, most people just see
Speaker 1: that big score prominently displayed, whether it's like an A
Speaker 1: or a B or a C or like a eighty
Speaker 1: five or a ninety eight or whatever, and it's not
Speaker 1: really meant to be shorthand for the public. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it is in a way where it's like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you're really taking a gamble here at like seventy five,
Speaker 1: But when it's really high up, it does seem to
Speaker 1: be kind of an indicator like this one's aoka in
Speaker 1: my book, that's not really what the restaurant inspection report
Speaker 1: is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a lot
Speaker 1: more granular than that. And so to really tell whether
Speaker 1: you're running a risk it eating in a restaurant or not,
Speaker 1: you actually do have to go to the trouble of
Speaker 1: looking up what the violations were and then even then
Speaker 1: judging for yourself, because short of health inspector deciding to
Speaker 1: shut the restaurant down and making the decision for you
Speaker 1: that you can't go there, they're not saying like don't
Speaker 1: eat here, Like if it passes, if it passes inspection
Speaker 1: enough to stay open, then as far as the county
Speaker 1: Health Department's concerned, it's good enough for you to be
Speaker 1: eating there. But that might not really jibe with your
Speaker 1: own definition. So to get that information, you have to
Speaker 1: go find out what they're why points were deducted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can't. It's either the mental plus or
Speaker 2: own article point out that just because someplace has a
Speaker 2: bad rating doesn't mean they haven't fixed things and it's
Speaker 2: fine now. And just because as a great rating doesn't
Speaker 2: mean they're not in violation that day. These inspectors come
Speaker 2: every six months to a year for a couple of
Speaker 2: hours during a lunch shift, and it is a snapshot
Speaker 2: of what occurred on that day. So there is no
Speaker 2: like failsafe for a consumer. You just gotta, you know,
Speaker 2: did the best. You can, cross your fingers the dice,
Speaker 2: everything's okay in.
Speaker 1: There, or just cook it home and boil everything, including
Speaker 1: your lettuce.
Speaker 2: Oh, boil lettuce delicious?
Speaker 1: What kidd oh, I didn't know. If I was missing
Speaker 1: out on something, then you got anything else on restaurant inspections.
Speaker 2: Just this one more little tidbit from a mental floss
Speaker 2: that I thought was pretty great. Let's here is that
Speaker 2: this one restaurant inspector said that he can smell cockroaches
Speaker 2: in the air at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a real problem with cockroaches. Though, don't you
Speaker 1: think to be able to smell I guess it'd be
Speaker 1: an infestation, is what he's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, you can walk in, take a deep breath,
Speaker 2: and he said it's kind of a nutty, oily smell
Speaker 2: that you After years on the job, I can identify it.
Speaker 1: It's like I still get hungry every time I smell it.
Speaker 2: I got a lot of roaches in my house right now,
Speaker 2: and it's really pissing me off. I don't clean house,
Speaker 2: you know. It's not yea gross, it's just, uh, this
Speaker 2: summer was just real kind of muggy and dankins.
Speaker 1: Do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in your
Speaker 1: attic or basement? No?
Speaker 2: I don't know where they're coming from, Like we see
Speaker 2: them outside all over the place, so sure, I don't.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's at swale Pond from the Permaculture episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe. Yeah, the permaculture lady is like, I forgot to
Speaker 1: tell you you're gonna have roaches.
Speaker 2: It's the only new thing, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, good good luck of godspeed though,
Speaker 1: go find the most sustainable way to treat it. I'll
Speaker 1: be interested to hear what you come up with.
Speaker 2: Well, so far it's been the flip flap method.
Speaker 1: Oh poor roaches. No.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about cockroaches, or restaurant
Speaker 1: health inspections or flip flops, you can type those words
Speaker 1: in the search bar houseofworks dot com. And I said that,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna call this a great gross way
Speaker 2: to finish this gross ish podcast excellent. Hey guys, wanted
Speaker 2: to regale you with the story of how you two
Speaker 2: contributed my fantastic relationship my wonderful girlfriend. Last summer and fall,
Speaker 2: I was traveling across the country, camping, going to national parks,
Speaker 2: and I wound up in moab Utah at canyon lands
Speaker 2: and arches and met a smart, fun girl at a
Speaker 2: brewery and we made a date to go hiking. The
Speaker 2: next day, I picked her up and we went on
Speaker 2: a wonderful little hike and disaster struck. Turns out months
Speaker 2: of cheddar broughtwurst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system,
Speaker 2: and I felt horrible and I had an inescapable urge
Speaker 2: to take the Browns to the super Bowl. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 2: was miles away from relif and I ran out of
Speaker 2: excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey,
Speaker 2: look at that arch again.
Speaker 1: Oh I can't.
Speaker 2: So I had to tell her the horrible truth on
Speaker 2: our first date, and I was sure it would ruin it. Eventually,
Speaker 2: I made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor
Speaker 2: people aside, and safely made it back to town. But
Speaker 2: I was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything.
Speaker 2: On the way back to town, she asked if she
Speaker 2: could put a podcast on, and she played me your
Speaker 2: episode about poop. No nice, How about that?
Speaker 1: She's got a good sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Great sense of humor. I've never been as happy to
Speaker 2: hear two men describing fecal matter. At that point, I
Speaker 2: knew anyone could spend a date almost pooping in their
Speaker 2: pants into an excuse to share their podcasts favorites. As
Speaker 2: a keeper, we've been together over a year now. We
Speaker 2: love listening to your new episodes while we hike in
Speaker 2: camp and poop.
Speaker 1: I guess they've got to remember the love seat that
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live commercial. It was like the two toilets
Speaker 1: facing each other. You could hold hands while you poop.
Speaker 2: Exactly. I couldn't be happy to find a new favorite
Speaker 2: thing to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at
Speaker 2: the same time. So I want to thank you guys.
Speaker 2: If you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year,
Speaker 2: we don't know yet. I'll be buying tickets as soon
Speaker 2: as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom and
Speaker 2: he said, if you do read this in the air,
Speaker 2: please give a shout out to.
Speaker 1: Alice Nice, Tom and Alice Yeah, way to go kids.
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing in Tom Nice story. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, like Tom did lay
Speaker 1: it on us, send us an email to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iheartrate com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H