Dirty Secrets

Many people don’t realize how much trust they place in a restaurant’s staff when they go out to eat, but is that trust warranted? They may be placated by the health code restaurants are obligated to abide by and the regular visits by board of health officials. However behind the swinging kitchen doors lies a cesspool of violations that, while not fatal, might make you think twice about eating out.

What we cut your pizzas with...

The Massachusetts Board of Health stipulates several provisions in an attempt to regulate restaurants and ensure the safety of their patrons. While most restaurants rigidly follow the cooking and storing procedures in terms of temperature and preparation which safeguards against many food borne illnesses, that still leaves a wide variety of things that can affect your meal before it even hits the table.

Perhaps the most violated of the code is the fourth condition that declares there be no bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food. It happens all the time, whether it be merely to rearrange the plating, or inadvertently while carrying it.

It also happens when we eat off your plate.

Yes, we really do. It may be a French fry or piece of calamari but it happens all the time. My boss went to a Fridays not long ago and he ordered nachos. As the waitress walked over to the table, he noticed a long string of cheese from the plate connected to the server’s mouth. Gross? It’s already happened to you.

Sanitize this

You run the risk of other things besides minor theft happening to your food though, via preparation. Has the knife that was used to cut the chicken for your salad been dropped on the floor? Are the hands of the chef clean? At one restaurant they make their own hand crushed marinara sauce. The man who prepares this is forced elbow deep in a giant bowl…without gloves…and very hairy arms. You weren’t expecting that kind of seasoning were you?

The dirty secrets that lie behind the kitchen doors don’t always go unnoticed, though. At the same restaurant , where the line is observable for any who want to watch their food being cooked, the sous chef absentmindedly licked his fingers and a guest at a nearby table noticed. Horrified, she outed him to the management staff even going so far as to call the corporate office to divulge his lack of adherence to health code policies.

Beyond the actual food you may believe you have little to worry about. But every aspect of your dining experience relies on our integrity and diligence. Is your fork clean? Are your condiments sanitary? At one restaurant, where oil is a fixed condiment on every table, servers are required to fill and clean these every night. Beside the table where this is done is the linen basket where dirty tablecloths and napkins are thrown. So to clean these glass oil dispensers we need only to reach over and grab a dirty napkin and wipe.

Yum.

At some places baskets are used to hold bread or breadsticks. These baskets can be found all over the restaurant, thrown at unsuspecting servers, falling on the floor, in puddles of dishwater, immersed in leftover food as its cleared from the table. Then at night they’re stored without being washed.

Double yum.

It’s not that we’re trying to be disgusting and reveling in our power to serve you nastiness, but when we’re paid $2.63 an hour it’s hard to care.

We’re not the only ones to blame though. Our managers can be just as irresponsible. At a restaurant in Woburn one summer we discovered we had an extra body “working the floor”, a mouse. My boss, who has since been fired was worried about repercussions and thus neglected to call and exterminator hoping it would eventually leave. We were under strict orders to refrain from screaming or calling attention to it as it scurried under our feet as we worked.

Still hungry?