November 7, 2017 • 54 mins
If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know the feeling that occurs when the health inspector pays a visit. While nerve wracking, it's the best insurance patrons have that their food will be prepared and served in a proper environment. Learn all about how these inspections work, from their past history to current incarnation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland. Put
the three of us in the room together with some
raw chicken and some old mop water. You got yourself
(00:24):
stuff you should know? So gross, So actually, Chuck, before
we get started, we have a very special guest here
with us today, our good friend and colleague, Jack O'Brien. Yeah, so,
first of all, say hello Jack, Hi, guys, thanks for
having me. Sure, as as a little means of set
up here, we want to let everyone know what how
(00:45):
this kind of came about. We are expanding our podcast network,
which is great and fun and awesome for everyone here.
And um, one of the super cool things that happened
is is uh, our our boss or company owner said, hey,
guess what we have just got Jack O'Brien away from
Cracked dot com to come over to our network to
(01:09):
kind of launch the comedy wing of our network. And um,
I think that the people need to hear about your
first efforts here a show that I think is great
called and it's quite a challenge to but tell everyone
about the Daily Zeitgeist. Right, So the Daily Zeitgeist is
a daily news, uh pop culture podcast. Basically we're trying
(01:33):
to uh get a take a sample of what's going
on in the big kind of national cultural unconscious. So
we talked about news, we talked about pop culture. Uh,
we discussed things like that. We've look at tabloids because
(01:54):
those are news sources that more Americans see than just
about any others since everybody needs to buy milk. So yeah,
that's that's the sort of stuff we look at as
well as, you know, the actual news. And like Jack,
you said something that I think probably past a few
people by this is daily like Monday through Friday. You
(02:18):
guys research and record and release a new podcast Monday
through Friday. Right, that's what we do. It's actually been
fun and I think we're kind of hitting our stride
getting into a bit of a rhythm. But uh yeah,
it's uh, it's just a lot of fun to kind
of I get to read really interesting ideas and really
(02:42):
interesting news articles and talk about them every day. So
I couldn't ask for a more fun job. So, um,
where can everybody find this? Jack? Where's the Daily Zeitgeist? Well,
if you know how to spell zeitgeist. You can uh
search the Daily Zeitguy on just about any podcasting application. Uh,
(03:04):
I would recommend Apple podcasts. Uh, just the Daily and
then type in Z and we should pop up and
you you guys send a five dollar bill to each
new subscriber for limited time, right, that's correct, every single
one of them. Cool. Yeah, very limited time, very limited.
(03:25):
We want to wish you an official welcome to the family.
We you came to atlant and we hung out something
and then we met briefly out in l A at
that podcast conference. But it's just really awesome to have
you guys aboard and I look forward to see what
else comes out of the comedy Wing here. Appreciate I
guess thanks for coming on, Jack, thanks for having me.
Lifelong dream, long time listener, first time caller, see Jack.
(03:49):
But all right, man, well let's get on with the episode. So, Chuck,
have you ever like been to a restaurant and seen
something that you weren't supposed to see and been like,
I just ate here. I used to work at restaurants,
as you know, and uh, you know, some of them
are pretty gross. I worked at a couple of myself
(04:10):
and I never saw anything that was like this is wrong,
but it I realized over the years that that I'm
in the minority in that sense. Dude. My first job
as a as a bus boy, that was when I
saw some of the most horrific things in my life,
mainly because they had Oh man, it was the people
(04:32):
that worked there. They were dirty folks. They were dirty folks,
and they were just um. They were people that didn't
care about their own personal health and hygiene or in
any way. It was all gross, gross. Gross. I saw
a guy one time, should I even say this, yes, please, dish,
(04:53):
and you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that
are gross, like drop high school dropouts, and hey, I'm
not knocking you. If you dropped out of high school,
go get that G E D and and keep at it.
But these were not those people. They couldn't they couldn't
even spell G E D. They're like, I didn't get
my kid. Yeah, So these people, they were gross people.
(05:14):
And I was thirteen and I couldn't speak up. I
didn't know, like, I'm not gonna go to the owner
of the restaurant at thirteen because he didn't care. But
I saw one of these dishwashers go into a walk
in cooler, and he was so mad about the schedule
that they put him on. He took the lid off
of a big, you know, fifteen gallon pot of Brunswick
(05:37):
stew and he put his his shoed foot and leg
into it all the way to the bottom and then
took it back out. And let me tell you, man,
those shoes. I've never had more disgusting clothing in my
life than the clothes that I worked in at a
barbecue restaurant. I know. They're like the whole reason box
(06:00):
are in business is because it's the only thing that
won't slide across the greasy during the floor of every
single restaurant in every single city in the entire world.
Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat
on the ground and say good catch and laugh and
then pick it up off the floor. It was like
it was like Upton Sinclair's uh the Jungle, the Jungle,
(06:22):
like right before my little thirteen year old lines I
grew up on that job. In many many ways, the
only way that it could have been more like the
Jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick stew
and they just kept him in there. It was so foul. Dude,
that's growdy. Man. You don't even know what our restaurant
inspection score was. I didn't even I saw nothing like
(06:43):
that at the restaurants I worked out. I worked at
a handful of them, nothing like that. Yeah, I worked
at a bunch more and it was nothing like that.
This was so that was the worst of the worst.
Oh my god, they're all burning in hell now. So
I drove by that place the other day on the
way to Emily's parents and in a different route. And
now it's like a cheat cheese a title max okay,
(07:04):
which I don't even know what that is. You com
pall in your car title there for extremely exorbitant interest rates.
Got what were the ghosts of of redknecks passed dwell
within those floors? Wow? Man, was the barbecue any good?
I guess it's a moot point, right? I still ate there,
Oh dude? After the shoe thing, Yeah, man, I didn't.
(07:24):
I was a kid. I didn't know. I mean, I
didn't have brunsicks due that day wherever. Again, I don't know.
I just I didn't know any better. I was dumb.
You ate the Brunswick stew checked in. I got a
lot smarter after that. Well, um, again, I've never seen
anything in person, but I have I've been on the
internet and seeing things like that guy who pete in
(07:47):
the coffee apparently every day, but I think that was
at an office, not a restaurant. There's like this um
laundry list of fingers being found in food. I saw
an article I think on like MPR something and it
was like just basically the top five times fingers were
found in food at restaurants and it happens a lot. Yeah,
(08:10):
just quickly, I should say that there. I feel bad
for a restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that
that it's not like some nice kind of place in town.
You can do all you can do, but you still
can't account for some little jerk employee that's mad about something,
that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. You
(08:33):
know you can't just you can't watch everyone the time.
And that's usually what is a case like that, Like
this dumb dishwasher kid, he just goes in the walk
ins is watch this right, and there's there's I saw,
um like there's a case to be made then for
not hiring young people. Yeah, you hire people who have
(08:56):
like built a a background for themselves, like a career
for themselves. Alright, those are called good restaurants. That's the difference. Yeah,
I guess that is the difference. So in a sense
that it's very much the owner's fault for being a
cheap bastard and hiring people who put their shoed foot
in the Brunswick stew Um. Okay, So my point is this, chuck,
(09:17):
that the shoed foot fingers in the and and at rbs,
like all these little things that that are just horrible
and horrific and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly
more frequent were it not for a lone group of people,
the thin blue line between us and utter chaos when
(09:42):
it comes to restaurants. The Health inspector, Yeah, this was
I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah, it's gonna be
a good one. Man, Like, I don't know when you
send it over, I was like, all right, but then
I started reading and it was interesting and awesome and
there's history to it. Yeah, and one of these consumer
advocacy shows that we loved to do. Uh, we're doing
our little a rough nat or impression. Man, I love
(10:05):
that guy. He's the tops. So restaurant health inspectors are
something of a newish invention. They're certainly not really old, UM,
because at least in the United States, it wasn't until
(10:25):
that book you mentioned, The Jungle was published that people
like really sat up and took notice, and Congress acted
almost immediately past the Pure Food and Drug Act the
next year. That's the impact that ups in Sinclair's The
Jungle had, Yeah, rightfully so. And in the book, I mean,
he went undercover. He was a muckraking journalists and God
(10:48):
bless him, and he went undercovered to basically just take
notes on all the horrible things he saw in the
in the meatpacking industry and slaughter houses, and he chronicled
all the inhumane things that he saw and the way
the animals are treated. But he also saw that in
humane ways the workers were treated. But this, his book
had this impact and UM and Congress actually acted and
(11:09):
they created the Pure Food and Drug Act. And one
of the things that came out of that was UM
what came to be known as the Food Code. And
the Food Code is basically like, here are the things
that you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent
from running a foul of the law or um creating
food borne illnesses. Yeah, and like previous to the states
(11:31):
were kind of taking care of their own health issues
as best they could on their own. But then when
when that book came out, people were like, wait a minute,
their shipping meat across state line. So the states aren't
taking care of it themselves. This meat is going out everywhere. Uh.
So it became a federal a federal thing to be regulated,
(11:53):
and they made a federal case what they did, and
along with the Pure Food and Drug Act, very importantly,
the Federal Meetings Action Act was passed in that same year.
And um, because I think everyone, I mean even back then,
like if you're grossed out in six then, uh, they
weren't as sensitive as we are today. So there was
some gnarly stuff going on. Dude, a guy falling into
(12:16):
like a hot dog grinder. Come on. So the food code, um,
the early food code that is was was sort of
the kind of the same stuff that we see today generally. Um,
we have refined everything over the years with science as
to what's truly dangerous and not and how it gets dangerous.
But even back then they were concerned about like proper
(12:38):
meat storage and food storage, and temperatures of things, and
the hygiene of employees and and the premises themselves. Yeah,
because you know, basically what constitutes good practices hasn't changed
all that much. But to to respond to changes that
do come about, um, that do change best practices or
(13:01):
our understanding of the science of like food board, nillessis
the the food Code was republished every year starting in
every two years they updated it and republished it. Uh,
and then in two thousand and one they moved it
to four years. But that that to me is like that, friends,
is the reason we pay taxes, so that there are
(13:23):
people who are going around finding out the most cutting
edge understanding of how we get sick from foods at restaurants,
and then also finding out the exact ways to prevent
this from happening, publishing it into a book, and distributing
it to the states who then put it into practice.
It takes money to do this kind of thing, but
(13:43):
that's why we pay taxes. And the next time somebody
tells you that they don't care about government regulations and
that we live in a n any state. You remind
them of what it would be like if they ate
out at a restaurant without this kind of stuff. Those people,
we don't need regulating stuff, all right, sir, Then you
will be eating eyeball. Right, you'll be eating human eyeball
(14:05):
in your next Frankfurter. I will feed it to you myself. Uh. So,
the food Code today, just like the very first one
back in UH, is voluntary. UM. It is not federal law.
It is still up to those states to go out
and write their own rules. It aligns generally with the
(14:28):
federal regulations and what the FDA recommends. UH. And then
it gets a little more confusing because when it comes
down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no federal or
state inspector that comes in there. It's the city or
the county who's going to be carrying this out, and
they work with the state and then in turn the
federal government to kind of all be on the same page. Right. Yeah.
(14:51):
I think it's almost kind of like the government's the
one who has the funding to go actually look around
and survey and find the science and put these best
practices out. But it's the county or the city where
the where the the rubber meets the road the shoe,
the shoe meets the pavement, more like where the shoe
meets the Brunswick stew. That's so right, and not the
(15:12):
Brunswick stew. That's like one of the best things I
had at Barbecuh. Let's take a break, shall we. I'm
gonna go brush my tongue with a toothbrush, okay, and
I'll be right back. All right, okay, and we're back
(15:54):
and chuck. Let me smell your breath. How's that? Man?
That's nice? Streen? Yeah, if I do detectives at Tom's
toothpaste you used no, okay, what toothpaste do you use?
I use Uh, I'm using Crest right now? Which one
(16:14):
the orange one? No? Yeah? So the the the color
of the packaging is orange. But the type of mint
it's like called citrus mint. But you would never if
you didn't see that, you wouldn't be like, oh, this
is citrus mint. It's just its own type of very
pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah. I just used the regular uh,
(16:38):
not not the white, but I think it's like the
blue crests right now. And pro health I think, yeah, yeah,
pro health. And then a dude, use the listerine. Now.
I've been on that for a solid couple of years
because it's six and one six benefits in one. Why
are we talking about this? I don't know. Man, we're
not even getting paid for that. Maybe mine is Maybe
(17:02):
mine is Aqua Fresh. It's either Aqua Fresh or Crest,
which everyone makes. Citrus. Man, that's what I used. But
do you remember aim? Oh? Yeah, what was that? So
that stuff? I think it's still around. It actually doesn't
do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes, as
far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out in
three different colors like green, red, and white, and it
(17:23):
was just pretty. But it's bad toothpaste. I don't I'm
not a big fan of it, but I love looking
at it. How about that? I remember that? All right?
So back to food inspection, now that our mouths are clean. Uh.
There are usually three kinds of food safety inspections. You
got you got your rag. The one that's done in
(17:43):
the rag, it's known as a routine inspection, and that's
the one where they come in. Might be every six months,
might be every year and a half or so, depending
on some stuff. We'll get to here in a bit.
And that's the one where you go in and you
just see the thing on the wall that gives it
the score. That's the one where you're working in the
restaurant hunt and the and the owner and the manager
freak out. They're like, oh God, no, no, they do
(18:05):
the second they walked through the door. Although I will
say in New Jersey, where I worked at the store
in basking Ridge, New Jersey, we were always great and
they took it really seriously. Every time the inspector came by,
they were like, come on in, and that's the way
it should be. A big shout out to the store
in basking Ridge, New Jersey. Way to go to the store.
That place is great and that's how. And they had
(18:26):
a restaurant group and they have like six restaurants and
they're all done the right way. I don't think you
could really have a restaurant group without approaching food inspection
and health standards in that way too. Yeah, I mean
it's just dumb, not too and from what I saw too.
Um we also kind of did you read that mental
fass article I sent? Yeah, So one of the things
it's called twelve Secrets of restaurant health inspectors. One of
(18:48):
the things they point out is that usually the bigger
the chain, So whether it's a restaurant group on up
to a global chain like you know, like one of
those guys oh wow cheeks, but um, you're probably going
to see something close to a hundred every time. And
the reason why is because they have a lot of
(19:09):
skin in the game. They have a lot to lose,
right if, like they pointed out with Chipotle, like there
were one or two locations of Chipotle's where um that
some bad cilanto got some people sick with the cool I,
but all Chipotle suffered as a result of people just
stopped going. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and
um came probably pretty close to to going under there
(19:32):
for a little while. And I think they're still definitely
calling their way out from under it. So they don't
just rely on state, county, or city health inspectors. They
do their own. They hire their own third parties to
come in and and carry out health inspections much more
frequently than the government's doing, just to make sure that
(19:52):
they're up to standards. Yeah, so your your local fast
food chain is more likely to be super clean than
the mom and pop and in theory, but in my opinion,
you're also more likely going to find the kid in
the kitchen that goes, hey watch this. Yeah. Yeah, it's
definitely trade off, and that's that's it. Yeah, because it's
definitely not to say that, you know, mom and pop
places are are inherently unstafe. If it's a family business,
(20:16):
you're you have just as much skin in the game
as a global global restaurant chain because this is your
family's livelihood. So yeah, you're gonna take it seriously. So
getting back. The other two types of inspections real quick,
besides the routine are the follow up um investigation where
they do say like, all right, you need to fix
these things. I'll be back next Thursday, UM, or I'll
(20:38):
be back tomorrow depending on what's going on, or I'll
shut down your restaurant while you fix the stuff it's
so bad. Uh. And then their inspections that are triggered
by a consumer complaints. Yes, that's the one where they like, um,
use the bat signal, but instead of a bad it's
like a fork in the sky and then the restaurant
inspector swoops in. It's like I'm here. I'm here. Everybod
(21:00):
aretady calm down. Yeah. So I mentioned that people restaurants
will be inspected maybe every six months, maybe every year
a year and a half. They are. It's not willy nilly.
They are assessed a risk factor as an establishment by
the county or or the you know, whatever local municipality
is carrying this out. And that has to do with
(21:20):
a bunch of things. Um. Sometimes it's the kind of food.
Like if you're serving sushi, you might get inspected a
little more sushi shushi because you're serving raw fish. I
didn't say sushi that done, shushi that done today. No, no,
oh no, that's steep rule. Steep rule. I thought you.
I thought it was my tooth. Um. Or if you're
(21:43):
cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you might get inspected
a little more than a deli that just has you know,
pre prepared meats and foods. Yeah like that. Those cold
cuts are already cooked. It's not like you're they're serving
you raw turkey slices like it's already cooked. They're just
putting it together onto a sandwich. That's a low risk
um restaurant comparatively speaking. Yeah, you know, always gets me,
(22:06):
even though I love a euro is when I see
the see the thing on the spit next to the
heat lamp rotating around right, I always just think, how
how safe is that? I would guess if it's operating
in the United States? Safe safe enough. That's the whole
point of restaurant inspectors, so that you don't have to
(22:27):
ask that question. That you can look at that and say,
somebody who knows what they're doing has inspected that and
determined that that is not a threat to my health.
Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it. No,
I'm with you, I understand. I also want to say,
there are some places where you go in and you're like,
this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I
have no idea how this place is allowed to stay
(22:49):
like this, but it's still worth it. And I would
direct you to Ann's, A's ghetto burger right by your house. Yeah,
that's just down the street. Yes, have you have you
had one? I've never had an ans because I thought
that she left and it closed. But it's still going.
Is she's still running it? You know? I don't know.
She she had been threatening to like retire for twenty years.
(23:12):
Or something. But I knew she wanted to get balled
out and didn't want to just close it down, So
hopefully she was able to retire. That's that's my hope.
But is the Wall Street Journal said it was I
think maybe the best hamburger in the United States? The
Wall Street Journal ain't lyon. You know, yes, but if
you go there, that's like decades worth of Greece just
(23:33):
on the event around the or the backsplash, like the
stainless steel backsplash or whatever splatter guard behind the griddle,
and you're like, just how does she how did she
get away with that? And then you take a bite
of it, and you're like, oh, because it matters not
at all compared to this burger. Uh, well, maybe she
is compliant, because that is the second risk factor involved
(23:56):
with how often you're gonna get inspected, which is it,
do you have a list of complaints or a record
of violations on your record, then you're gonna be on
their frequent visitor list, right, you know? Yeah? Yeah, And
especially if you've ever been the source of a food
born illness, you're on your on your you're a high
(24:16):
risk automatically probably permanently. Yeah, I would think so, and
depending on where you are, you know, like you're gonna
get lots of visits after that. Like that's probably aside
from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a food
boarding illness is probably the worst thing that can happen
in your restaurant, I would guess, um, and you know,
(24:38):
whether you're a new restaurant, well, if you're a new
restaurant in particular, I should say I think the standard
is is that depending on where you fall as far
as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a
deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood,
you're assigned like an initial risk assessment, and then depending
(25:01):
on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say
they're gonna come visit every three months for the first year,
or if you're a deli, they might come once every
year and a half. And then depending on how you
perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are
basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that
(25:23):
that schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say
that deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently
every eighteen months, they're gonna start getting inspected every twelve
months or every six months. Where that sushi place that's
getting inspected every three months or six months. If if
it's just painfully obvious that they are top notch pros
(25:44):
who are taking this quite seriously and never get caught
for anything, then that three or six months may end
up turning into a year. Who knows. Yeah, you may
have heard reports on the news too that UM food
inspectors have racist policies where they will go after ethnic
restaurants more often. No, I hadn't heard that, is that right? Yeah,
I've seen I've seen reports on stuff like that that
(26:07):
they get inspected more frequently if you're like, have an
ethnic restaurant, that's pretty rotten. But there is a food
safety expert at North Carolina State named Ben Chapman that
says there's really no data to back that up. He said,
but there could be biases through consumer complaint systems. Uh.
And they did a sort of just a a snapshot
(26:29):
from Yelp reviews, which say what you want about Yelp reviews,
they're pretty much the worst thing ever, right, But if
you look at Yelp reviews, you do a search for
food poisoning, and close to seventy of the time they
were ethnic restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. So
I see, this food is weird. It is possible recognize
(26:52):
it that some bias comes in through that. But that
makes sense. Then chuck like if if if yelp is
um a proxy for the number of times somebody might
call in um a complaint. That's one of the ways
that the food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant
is when somebody the public, said, you know, calls and
says something or complaints. UM. So I mean that that
(27:16):
makes utter, in complete sense. Um, have you ever called
and complained about a restaurant? Have you ever called the
health department? I never have either, and they're actually after
researching this article, I was like, there, I can think
of it. At least one time when I could have
and should have called just got undercooked chicken and um,
you mean I both got very sick for like the
(27:38):
whole weekend, and I kept calling this place like like,
what are you guys gonna do about? Is you have
to do something? And um, they just got less and
less interested the more frequently I called him by the
by like the fourth or fifth time, was like, we're
still suffering. I just wanted to let you know we're
laying around throwing up. And they didn't do anything about it.
(28:00):
There was no, um, we're sorry that that. I think
they actually didn't believe me. Maybe, But now that I've
read this, so I'm like, I totally should have called
the health department on those guys. It was in Atlanta,
I think I remember that. Actually we got so we
were sick for an entire week, yes, right across from
where we used to work actually, and they could not
(28:24):
have cared less. And that's what ticked me off. Oh
you were calling the restaurant over, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I thought you called the health inspector over. But now
now I'm like, why wouldn't Why didn't we just call
it health inspector? Now I would call for sure, now
that I've done this research, because it's not like like
what you're doing is helping other people from from the before,
(28:44):
from the same fate befalling. Yeah, you're not being a rat, right,
which is another thing that health inspectors look out for.
All right, well let's talk about that. When you when
this is how that this goes down. They're unannounced visits.
Like I said, so I've worked at UM. I've worked
it I don't know, like probably four or five places
(29:05):
over the years, and two of them were pretty bad.
The aforementioned barbecue place and then where I worked in
college wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a
typical like college town Mexican joint UM, but it wasn't
like the super professional other restaurants that I've worked at.
But in those first two places, I remember when the
(29:27):
restaurant inspector walked through the door, a panic set in. UH.
Invariably the one of the like the GM or whoever
the manager was, would immediately confront UH in a nice
not confront but greet the person and send you know,
the understanding was someone go back to the kitchen and
tell everyone that the inspector is here. And judging from
(29:50):
that Mental Floss article you sent, that's exactly how it works.
And for that reason, the very first thing a good
health inspector does is kind of barged through there and
say I'm going straight into the kitchen right the second right,
because they know what's going on, right, that's they have
to or else a whole bunch of violations get covered
up really quickly, very quickly, And so in that mental
(30:12):
Flass article, basically they said they needed to do like
a a brisk like run walk through the kitchen as
fast as they could. But it's also you you scals,
like what do you do and like just stand there
and freeze. That's what they should do, is be like
everybody phrase and then like have their finger and thumb
(30:32):
in the shape of a gun because I don't think
they're allowed to actually carry guns. Well, this one health
inspector in the Mental Flass things said, we want to
see the things that won't be there in another three
to four minutes. But that's the thing. But I mean
it could be anything like there's there's like, um, if
you are sitting there making food and you have like
(30:53):
a cup of coke, right, you're not supposed to have
that there or in your cell phone in the kitchen.
It's another big one. I'll bet that is probably the
most frequent violation today. They're covered in poop. Do you
ever see something like if I have you ever just
stopped and looked at people on the street like with
their phones, like they'll just be stopped mid something like
(31:15):
they have like a shovel like propped up against their
their shoulder, just looking at their phone with their mouth
hanging open, and it's like crazy, we're turning into like
a society of zombies. Man, how do you stare at
your phone? I've seen you do that. You do it
in a smarter looking like I do the thing where
I'm like stroking my chin thoughtfully. I've got like one
(31:36):
eyebrow arch Alright, So the first thing they inspect, obviously
the kitchen. The the manager or the owner or whoever
is there on point is with the inspector the whole time,
because they're saying like hey, like little things like that
catchup bottles disgusting, Like why don't you go ahead and
have someone clean it up? And I won't dock your point,
(31:56):
but just get it clean. And the guy wipes it
down and he's like, no, that brand. It's so we
get some hinds in heresgusting. But the first thing they
inspect or the dynamic areas, which are the kitchen food
preparation areas. UM basically anywhere where there's food actively out
is the first place they'll go, right, That's that's the
(32:19):
static area dynamics. The dynamic okay, and then you start
with the hundred points. By the way, I don't know
if we mentioned that, which I think is kind of optimistic.
It's saying like, I want to believe the best in you.
So everybody starts with a hundred and then we start
deducting from there. Yeah, then it just gets sad. So Um.
One of the first things they're looking for is employee
(32:40):
hygiene because remember what you mentioned, like way back and
when the Food and Drug Act was created, the Food
Code was first established. Um, there were a lot of
basic tenants that were put forth back then, and one
of them was, you're the people who cook the food
need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one
of the big things that the health inspectors looking for,
like are they wearing gloves, which, by the way, is
(33:02):
not to say that if an employees wearing gloves that
you're totally covered. Um, the gloves are supposed to be
a fail safe to good hand washing, So you want
them to be washing their hands very frequently and then
wearing gloves on top of that, but then on top
of that not doing things like like using their cell
phone with the gloves on because you've just automatically contaminated
(33:25):
them and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at
that point. Right, So there's a lot of hygiene things
that are are being taken into account. But how do
you how do you tell whether people are washing their
hands when you're just walking into a kitchen. Of course
they're going to wash their hands in front of you
and the way that they're supposed to be, but how
do you know they're doing it routinely? Chuck? Well, yeah,
(33:48):
and we should say that there is a way you're
supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse them off
and just dry them with the towel that's sitting by
the sink or just below on them. You rents, You
put on the soap, you scrub for twenty seconds, then
you dry off with a one use towel and good old,
unsustainable made out of tree paper towel. Uh yeah, Or
(34:09):
if you're a really fancy restaurant, you can just have
like cashmere towels laying around as long as you faw
them away afterwards. Right, you have to go away. But
you're a little trick. I know where you were leading.
How you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant
inspector in the middle Flass article said, they go in
the first thing they do because it takes them a
couple of hours at a just sort of a normal
size restaurant, um, four or five hours at a big
(34:31):
hotel restaurant. He said, he puts an X on the
paper towels, and if he goes back at the end
of his inspection and that X is still in the
paper towel, then he knows hands are not being washed. Right,
very sneaking, pretty clever. Yeah, uh so, I guess we
just gave it away though, So now all the people
are going to go check their paper towel rolls. There
(34:53):
are other ways. Um, yeah, that was just a setup
to nudge them into the actual way he's telling, like
wash your hands. Um. Food is another big one too, Right.
You want to make sure that the food is being
properly stored and properly cooked. And apparently there is a
danger zone um between I think like zero and a
(35:14):
hundred and forty that you want to hit or that
you want to stay outside of. So basically you want
your food, especially like um, raw meat, to be stored
at a temperature frozen, right or else kept at forty
degrees fairheight four degrees celsius or below for fridges. Um,
And then when you cook it, you have to cook
(35:36):
it to at least a hundred and sixty degrees internal
temperature for beef, pork, all those guys, and then a
hundred forty five for fish. And if a restaurant is
not doing that, that's a big that's a big one,
as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the best way to
think about food storage is without getting into the specific temperatures.
Is if it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it
(35:57):
should be cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be
it should be hot. Is that middle ground is where
you're in big trouble exactly. They talked about lukewarm being
the big enemy, right, not not that's never good lukewarm.
I'm trying to think of a time when lukewarm is
preferable with anything. Um, it just sounds gross. I like
(36:20):
my food really hot too. Yeah. Like, that's the one
thing I will send something back is if it's was
clearly made a little earlier than the rest of the
party at the table and it's sort of lukewarm, I
might no, man, I want I want steam coming off
this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah they do, and then they're like, oh,
I guess you want a little spit on that too.
(36:41):
Apparently soup should be uh Like, the way you reheat
things is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick sto.
You don't just throw it out every night. You put
it back in the walk in so some jerk can
step in it. But when you bring soups and brawls
back uh to heat, you have to reboil them entirely
(37:01):
right from their refrigerated state, which makes sense, but that's
never very good for um food. If it's already prepared
once you reboil it, that's that's probably you're just gonna
want to throw that away then, yeah, man, it toughens
everything up, or else it overcooks it. It's already been
cooked once, so when you bring it to a boil,
(37:21):
you're really cooking it again. And for food boorn illnesses,
that's a good way to treat it, but it doesn't
necessarily make for the most appetizing food. All Right. I
don't know if I agree with that, but that's all right,
that's what I'm going with. Uh, frozen meat, you don't
just say, hey, Jimmy, throw that frozen bird out on
the table and leave it there until this evening. Right.
(37:43):
But you don't just leave food out to thaw there.
There are proper ways of following and bringing things back
to the correct temperature. Right. And then so let's say
you have a place where you're cutting up that thowed
chicken that was properly thought um, and then you set
the knife down and somebody else picks it up and
they start cutting lettuce with it. That's cross contamination. That
(38:04):
is extremely dangerous because as you know, very few people
cook their lettuce before they eat it in a salad.
It's raw and so now it has raw chicken juice
on the lettuce that you're eating raw and uncooked, and
you can die from that. UM. So cross contamination is
a big one they look for. They also UM it
can be a little more simple, like with something like
(38:25):
UM silverware. From what I saw, if the silverware is
dirty or smudgy, UM, that is a big problem because
that means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's
a lot of that's like a big red flag that UM.
Apparently health health inspectors will will tell you that if
the silver ware is dirty. It usually is indicative of
(38:45):
just a dirty restaurant in general. Um. And I've always
heard I don't know if it's an urban legend or not,
but uh, you know, like the just the plastic soda
cups that like a lot of restaurants will have. Um,
have you ever heard that it's not possible for them
to get to the temperature needed to kill any bacteria
(39:08):
on them, because they'll melt otherwise, so that when you
drink out of them, they've not really been sanitized from before.
I have not heard that. But as as someone who
has worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm
going to watch these things that this temperature you just
throw everything through there. Yeah, you don't have any choice
in what temperatures. It's all prescribed for you. You're just
(39:30):
basically putting them on the tray and sliding them through,
pulling the door down, and then it washes them and
you lift the door up and pull them out. Yes,
and I will say one of my dreams that is
to have one of those in my home. Those I
can't remember what they're called, but they're wonderful. It's pretty great. Yeah,
it just watches everything like super fast. So that's the
dynamic areas, right. There's also the static areas, where it's
(39:51):
things like, um, well, the dish washing area actually apparently
is a static area doesn't change very much. Um where
you store cleaning products that kind of stuff. I guess
you get points deducted if you're cleaning products or your
toxic chemicals are not in there marked original package, because
you could they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar
(40:12):
or something like that. Yeah, and they're gonna check. The
static areas include a lot of things that you don't
think would even fall into the purview of a restaurant inspector.
They're gonna look at your HVAC systems and your bents
and your smoke detectors. Uh, they're gonna look at your
dining room and the floors and the ceilings, and your
ceiling vans and your dumpster behind and then your grease trap.
(40:34):
Like they look at everything, right, which is good. And
another one that they take a look at that I
think is probably a big problem for restaurants in a
lot of ways are ice machines. Um. The there's a
lot of parts to ice machines that are out of view.
This thing scared me in mental flaws. Now that can
like grow mold pretty easy, and not just the ice
(40:56):
machine right where they're like scooping ice out, which is
another thing too, Like there better be an ice scoop right, Um,
it can grow mold in the ice machine. But also
those shoots where ice comes out of like a like
a beverage dispenser, those are usually serviced by the company
that that makes the beverages that it's dispensing, and so
(41:18):
it would be up to that company to clean those out,
which means that they get even less attention than the
rest of the restaurant. So the next time you're getting
like ice out of beverage dispenser, like get your flashlight
out of your pocket and look up there, uh and
see if you see any mold and then just raise
holy hell if you do. Yeah. And I'm not a
big fan of the serve yourself soft drink stations anyway,
(41:42):
for you know, out there with the public. I don't
think the public should ever have access to something. That's why,
well that's not the reason, but buffets are just so
gross and creepy. I haven't been to a buffet, and
good lord, I don't know twenty years, but you should
the thought of a buffet. I know they have the
sneeze guard, but uh, people like scooping in and serving
(42:03):
themselves their own food from a drough is so weird
and gross an archaic that I can't believe people still
do that. Well. I mean also, like even if you're
using like a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop
something out, so did the person before you, right, And
that means you're touching the safe serving spoon and then
(42:24):
going back and using your hands to go eat. So
you just touched whatever the other person had on their hands,
and now you're coming in contact with your mouth. It's
a flawed system, for sure. It is, because what you're
saying is, I'm going to count on the three hundred
people that have eaten here today before me are all
completely hygienic. All their hands have been washed. Yeah, Timothy,
(42:47):
poop hands isn't among them. No one did a single
gross thing, like if a tater tot fell off the spoon,
flicked it back in with their finger, Like, no one
did anything wrong at all. I I just no way,
not even like whole foods or someplace. Those are all
gross to me. Oh yeah, whole foods would count with
that too. Huh, Although I do like a build your
(43:08):
own salad thing every once in a while. That's the
exception good salad bar. Yeah, it's tough to turn down.
I'm with. Well, let's take a break, think a little
more about salads, and we'll be right back. All right,
(43:49):
we're back, Charles. Let's talk about point deductions. A. Yes,
let's remember we said that restaurant inspectors are very optimistic
and they start out with a hundred. It just goes
down from there. And again, you know, since these are
done like city by city or county by county, like
everybody has like their own methods or whatever. But usually,
and I think the f d a UM has pointed out,
(44:13):
like there are five things that you're really looking for,
like five general categories UM improper UM storage of food
as far as temperature goes, inadequately cooked food, UM, equipment
that's contaminated, sources that are unsafe, uh, that are an
(44:34):
unsafe supply of the ingredients, right, so like if it
turns out like the goat is coming from their buddies farm,
that might be a problem. And then personal hygiene of
the people who work there, right, And so depending on
some of those, especially if there's multiple ones of these,
these are big ones, um, they will probably be a
(44:55):
high priority type one or critical violation any of those. Yes,
And then there's also other ones where like this is
not that big of a deal, but it's definitely something
that needs to be paid attention to. Those fall after
those usually and it can be anything from like a
dentic can that could conceivably contain botuli is um but
definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away,
(45:17):
to um, there being a hole in the screen door
that's left open for some reason. Yeah, and these uh.
As far as deducting individual points that you'll see on
the wall when you walk in and if you don't
look at that piece of paper when you walk into
a restaurant, I don't know what's going on in your brain.
You should always do that. Um. But like a static
violation like hey, there were some chairs that had bad legs,
(45:40):
your ceiling fan was pretty dusty, those will be like
a point each, maybe a couple of points for a
minor infraction like you're cleaning product, like I found a roach,
you know, the the chef has a cell phone in
the kitchen. That's a couple of points all the way
up to four and five points, and those that's when
you're talking about your your fridge is broken and it
(46:01):
is not up to temperature, and everything in there is
at risk, and that's when they can actually shut you
down until you get it fixed. Yeah, which I got
the impression from this article that that is it's a
rarity that the health inspector wants to air on the
side of the restaurant staying open and solving everything as
quickly as it can, while also it's business not suffering unnecessarily,
(46:25):
so if you're if your restaurant gets shut down temporarily,
like that violation was significant enough that that people were
at an immediate risk of getting sick from visiting your restaurant, exactly. Yeah,
it's a big deal. In other words, as it's as
big a deal as you would think. Yeah, but with
those point deductions, if you go in and you see
like a seventy two on a restaurant score sheet, it's
(46:49):
probably not twenty eight individual small violations, right. There are
probably some four and five pointers in there, and you
should probably think about eating there or you know it
says in the art in this article. You can go
to the website and really break down because those aren't
for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily.
But um, if you do look at them, if you
(47:10):
can get close to them, you can actually look and
see the little category for each thing. Um. Sometimes behind
the register they may not like you poking around. Well,
the health health departments usually put them on the web
these days. Yeah, that's I'll saying, Like, you can investigate online,
but in the restaurant itself, it is marked. It's you know,
(47:31):
a bunch of tiny little letters and categories, and you
can give it a look. And uh, you know, as
long as I wouldn't spend too much time there, like,
just go by that initial score. And if you're really like, yeah,
I gotta see what those eighteen points were deducted for,
I would just turn around and walk out, right, especially
if there's an identical place, like right across the street. Um.
(47:54):
But that is a pretty good point because when you
think about it, most people just see that score prominently displayed,
whether it's like an A or a B or a C,
or like a eighty five or a ninety eight or whatever. Um.
And it's not really meant to be shorthand for the public.
It's I mean, I guess it isn't a way where
(48:16):
it's like, hey, buddy, you're you're really taking a gamble
here at like seventy um. But when it's really high up,
it does seem to be kind of an indicator like
this one's a okay. In my book, that's not really
what the restaurant uh inspection report is supposed to be.
It's supposed to be a lot more granular than that.
(48:37):
And so to really tell whether you're running a risk
at eating in a restaurant or not, you actually do
have to go to the trouble of looking up what
the violations were and then even then judging for yourself,
because short of the health inspector deciding to shut the
restaurant down and making the decision for you that you
can't go there, they're not they're not saying like don't
(48:57):
eat here. Like if it passes, if it passes inspection
enough to stay open, then as far as the county
Health Department is concerned, it's good enough for you to
be eating there. But that might not really jibe with
your own definition. So to get that that information. You
have to go find out what they're why points were deducted. Yeah,
and you can't. Uh, it's either the mental plus or
(49:18):
our own article point out that just because someplace has
a bad rating doesn't mean they haven't fixed things and
it's fine now. And just because as a great rating
doesn't mean they're not in violation that day. There. These
inspectors come every six months to a year for a
couple of hours during a lunch shift, and it is
a snapshot of what occurred on that day. Right, So
(49:41):
there's no like fail safe for a consumer. You just
gotta you know, did the best you can, cross your fingers.
You just roll the dice and everything's okay in there,
or just cook at home and boil everything including your
lettuce boiled lettuce delicious. What oh, I didn't know if
I was missing on and then you got anything else
(50:02):
on restaurant inspections. Um. Just this one more little tidbit
from Mental Floss that I thought it was pretty great
is that this one restaurant inspector said that he can
smell cockroaches in the air at this point. Yeah, that's
a real problem with cockroaches, though, don't you think to
(50:22):
be able to smell. I guess it'd be an infestation,
is what he's He said, you can walk in, take
a deep breath, and he said it's kind of a nutty,
oily smell that you after years on the job, I
can identify it. It's like I still get hungry every
time I smell it. I got a lot of roaches
in my house right now, and it's really pissing me off.
(50:43):
A clean house. You know, it's not gross, it's just
this summer was just real, kind of muggy and dank.
And do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in
your attic or basement? No? I don't know where they're
coming from, Like we see him outside all over the place,
so I don't. Maybe it's at Swale Pond from Perman
Culture episode. Maybe. Yeah. The Perman Culture lady was like,
(51:07):
I forgot to tell you you're gonna have roaches. It's
the only new thing, right, I don't know. Man, good
good luck and god speed, though, go find the most
sustainable way to treat it. I'll be interested to hear
you come up with. Well, so far it's been the
flip flap method. Oh poor roaches. No. Uh, If you
want to know more about cockroaches or restaurant health inspections
(51:28):
or flip flops. You can type those words in the
search bar a house of works dot com. And I
said that, which means it's time for listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this a great, gross way to finish
this gross ish podcast. Excellent. Hey, guys, wanted to regale
you with the story of how you two contributed. My
fantastic relationship my wonderful girlfriend last summer and follows traveling
(51:49):
across the country, camping, going to national parks, and I
wound up in moab Utah at canyon lands and arches
and met a smart, fun girl at a brewery and
we made a date to go hiking. The next day,
I picked her up and we went on a wonderful
little hike and disaster struck. It turns out months of
cheddar brought worst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system,
(52:10):
and I felt horrible, and I had an inescapable urge
to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, I
was miles away from a leif and I ran out
of excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey,
look at that arch again. Oh uh, so I had
to tell her the horrible truth on our first date,
and I was sure it would ruin it. Eventually, I
(52:31):
made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor people aside,
and uh safely made it back to town. But I
was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything. On
the way back to town, she asked if she could
put a podcast on, and she played me your episode
about poop. No nice, how about that? She's got a
good sense of human great sense of humor. I've never
(52:51):
been as happy to hear two men describing fecal matter.
At that point, I knew anyone could spend a date
almost pooping in their pants into an excuse to share
their podcasts favorite As a keeper, we've been together over
a year now. We love listening to your new episodes
while we hike in camp and uh and poop. I
guess they've got to remember the love seat that Saturday
Night Live commercial. It was like the two toilets facing
(53:13):
each other's You could hold hands while you poop. Exactly.
I couldn't be happy to find a new favorite thing
to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at the
same time. So I want to thank you guys if
you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year. We
don't know yet. UM I'll be buying tickets as soon
as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom, and
he said, if you do read this in the air,
please give a shout out to Alice. Nice Tom and Alice. Yeah,
(53:36):
way to go kids. Uh, thanks for writing in Tom
nice story. Uh. If you want to get in touch
with this like Tom did, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast the house. Stuff works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(54:01):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
M
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland. Put
the three of us in the room together with some
raw chicken and some old mop water. You got yourself
(00:24):
stuff you should know? So gross, So actually, Chuck, before
we get started, we have a very special guest here
with us today, our good friend and colleague, Jack O'Brien. Yeah, so,
first of all, say hello Jack, Hi, guys, thanks for
having me. Sure, as as a little means of set
up here, we want to let everyone know what how
(00:45):
this kind of came about. We are expanding our podcast network,
which is great and fun and awesome for everyone here.
And um, one of the super cool things that happened
is is uh, our our boss or company owner said, hey,
guess what we have just got Jack O'Brien away from
Cracked dot com to come over to our network to
(01:09):
kind of launch the comedy wing of our network. And um,
I think that the people need to hear about your
first efforts here a show that I think is great
called and it's quite a challenge to but tell everyone
about the Daily Zeitgeist. Right, So the Daily Zeitgeist is
a daily news, uh pop culture podcast. Basically we're trying
(01:33):
to uh get a take a sample of what's going
on in the big kind of national cultural unconscious. So
we talked about news, we talked about pop culture. Uh,
we discussed things like that. We've look at tabloids because
(01:54):
those are news sources that more Americans see than just
about any others since everybody needs to buy milk. So yeah,
that's that's the sort of stuff we look at as
well as, you know, the actual news. And like Jack,
you said something that I think probably past a few
people by this is daily like Monday through Friday. You
(02:18):
guys research and record and release a new podcast Monday
through Friday. Right, that's what we do. It's actually been
fun and I think we're kind of hitting our stride
getting into a bit of a rhythm. But uh yeah,
it's uh, it's just a lot of fun to kind
of I get to read really interesting ideas and really
(02:42):
interesting news articles and talk about them every day. So
I couldn't ask for a more fun job. So, um,
where can everybody find this? Jack? Where's the Daily Zeitgeist? Well,
if you know how to spell zeitgeist. You can uh
search the Daily Zeitguy on just about any podcasting application. Uh,
(03:04):
I would recommend Apple podcasts. Uh, just the Daily and
then type in Z and we should pop up and
you you guys send a five dollar bill to each
new subscriber for limited time, right, that's correct, every single
one of them. Cool. Yeah, very limited time, very limited.
(03:25):
We want to wish you an official welcome to the family.
We you came to atlant and we hung out something
and then we met briefly out in l A at
that podcast conference. But it's just really awesome to have
you guys aboard and I look forward to see what
else comes out of the comedy Wing here. Appreciate I
guess thanks for coming on, Jack, thanks for having me.
Lifelong dream, long time listener, first time caller, see Jack.
(03:49):
But all right, man, well let's get on with the episode. So, Chuck,
have you ever like been to a restaurant and seen
something that you weren't supposed to see and been like,
I just ate here. I used to work at restaurants,
as you know, and uh, you know, some of them
are pretty gross. I worked at a couple of myself
(04:10):
and I never saw anything that was like this is wrong,
but it I realized over the years that that I'm
in the minority in that sense. Dude. My first job
as a as a bus boy, that was when I
saw some of the most horrific things in my life,
mainly because they had Oh man, it was the people
(04:32):
that worked there. They were dirty folks. They were dirty folks,
and they were just um. They were people that didn't
care about their own personal health and hygiene or in
any way. It was all gross, gross. Gross. I saw
a guy one time, should I even say this, yes, please, dish,
(04:53):
and you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that
are gross, like drop high school dropouts, and hey, I'm
not knocking you. If you dropped out of high school,
go get that G E D and and keep at it.
But these were not those people. They couldn't they couldn't
even spell G E D. They're like, I didn't get
my kid. Yeah, So these people, they were gross people.
(05:14):
And I was thirteen and I couldn't speak up. I
didn't know, like, I'm not gonna go to the owner
of the restaurant at thirteen because he didn't care. But
I saw one of these dishwashers go into a walk
in cooler, and he was so mad about the schedule
that they put him on. He took the lid off
of a big, you know, fifteen gallon pot of Brunswick
(05:37):
stew and he put his his shoed foot and leg
into it all the way to the bottom and then
took it back out. And let me tell you, man,
those shoes. I've never had more disgusting clothing in my
life than the clothes that I worked in at a
barbecue restaurant. I know. They're like the whole reason box
(06:00):
are in business is because it's the only thing that
won't slide across the greasy during the floor of every
single restaurant in every single city in the entire world.
Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat
on the ground and say good catch and laugh and
then pick it up off the floor. It was like
it was like Upton Sinclair's uh the Jungle, the Jungle,
(06:22):
like right before my little thirteen year old lines I
grew up on that job. In many many ways, the
only way that it could have been more like the
Jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick stew
and they just kept him in there. It was so foul. Dude,
that's growdy. Man. You don't even know what our restaurant
inspection score was. I didn't even I saw nothing like
(06:43):
that at the restaurants I worked out. I worked at
a handful of them, nothing like that. Yeah, I worked
at a bunch more and it was nothing like that.
This was so that was the worst of the worst.
Oh my god, they're all burning in hell now. So
I drove by that place the other day on the
way to Emily's parents and in a different route. And
now it's like a cheat cheese a title max okay,
(07:04):
which I don't even know what that is. You com
pall in your car title there for extremely exorbitant interest rates.
Got what were the ghosts of of redknecks passed dwell
within those floors? Wow? Man, was the barbecue any good?
I guess it's a moot point, right? I still ate there,
Oh dude? After the shoe thing, Yeah, man, I didn't.
(07:24):
I was a kid. I didn't know. I mean, I
didn't have brunsicks due that day wherever. Again, I don't know.
I just I didn't know any better. I was dumb.
You ate the Brunswick stew checked in. I got a
lot smarter after that. Well, um, again, I've never seen
anything in person, but I have I've been on the
internet and seeing things like that guy who pete in
(07:47):
the coffee apparently every day, but I think that was
at an office, not a restaurant. There's like this um
laundry list of fingers being found in food. I saw
an article I think on like MPR something and it
was like just basically the top five times fingers were
found in food at restaurants and it happens a lot. Yeah,
(08:10):
just quickly, I should say that there. I feel bad
for a restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that
that it's not like some nice kind of place in town.
You can do all you can do, but you still
can't account for some little jerk employee that's mad about something,
that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. You
(08:33):
know you can't just you can't watch everyone the time.
And that's usually what is a case like that, Like
this dumb dishwasher kid, he just goes in the walk
ins is watch this right, and there's there's I saw,
um like there's a case to be made then for
not hiring young people. Yeah, you hire people who have
(08:56):
like built a a background for themselves, like a career
for themselves. Alright, those are called good restaurants. That's the difference. Yeah,
I guess that is the difference. So in a sense
that it's very much the owner's fault for being a
cheap bastard and hiring people who put their shoed foot
in the Brunswick stew Um. Okay, So my point is this, chuck,
(09:17):
that the shoed foot fingers in the and and at rbs,
like all these little things that that are just horrible
and horrific and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly
more frequent were it not for a lone group of people,
the thin blue line between us and utter chaos when
(09:42):
it comes to restaurants. The Health inspector, Yeah, this was
I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah, it's gonna be
a good one. Man, Like, I don't know when you
send it over, I was like, all right, but then
I started reading and it was interesting and awesome and
there's history to it. Yeah, and one of these consumer
advocacy shows that we loved to do. Uh, we're doing
our little a rough nat or impression. Man, I love
(10:05):
that guy. He's the tops. So restaurant health inspectors are
something of a newish invention. They're certainly not really old, UM,
because at least in the United States, it wasn't until
(10:25):
that book you mentioned, The Jungle was published that people
like really sat up and took notice, and Congress acted
almost immediately past the Pure Food and Drug Act the
next year. That's the impact that ups in Sinclair's The
Jungle had, Yeah, rightfully so. And in the book, I mean,
he went undercover. He was a muckraking journalists and God
(10:48):
bless him, and he went undercovered to basically just take
notes on all the horrible things he saw in the
in the meatpacking industry and slaughter houses, and he chronicled
all the inhumane things that he saw and the way
the animals are treated. But he also saw that in
humane ways the workers were treated. But this, his book
had this impact and UM and Congress actually acted and
(11:09):
they created the Pure Food and Drug Act. And one
of the things that came out of that was UM
what came to be known as the Food Code. And
the Food Code is basically like, here are the things
that you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent
from running a foul of the law or um creating
food borne illnesses. Yeah, and like previous to the states
(11:31):
were kind of taking care of their own health issues
as best they could on their own. But then when
when that book came out, people were like, wait a minute,
their shipping meat across state line. So the states aren't
taking care of it themselves. This meat is going out everywhere. Uh.
So it became a federal a federal thing to be regulated,
(11:53):
and they made a federal case what they did, and
along with the Pure Food and Drug Act, very importantly,
the Federal Meetings Action Act was passed in that same year.
And um, because I think everyone, I mean even back then,
like if you're grossed out in six then, uh, they
weren't as sensitive as we are today. So there was
some gnarly stuff going on. Dude, a guy falling into
(12:16):
like a hot dog grinder. Come on. So the food code, um,
the early food code that is was was sort of
the kind of the same stuff that we see today generally. Um,
we have refined everything over the years with science as
to what's truly dangerous and not and how it gets dangerous.
But even back then they were concerned about like proper
(12:38):
meat storage and food storage, and temperatures of things, and
the hygiene of employees and and the premises themselves. Yeah,
because you know, basically what constitutes good practices hasn't changed
all that much. But to to respond to changes that
do come about, um, that do change best practices or
(13:01):
our understanding of the science of like food board, nillessis
the the food Code was republished every year starting in
every two years they updated it and republished it. Uh,
and then in two thousand and one they moved it
to four years. But that that to me is like that, friends,
is the reason we pay taxes, so that there are
(13:23):
people who are going around finding out the most cutting
edge understanding of how we get sick from foods at restaurants,
and then also finding out the exact ways to prevent
this from happening, publishing it into a book, and distributing
it to the states who then put it into practice.
It takes money to do this kind of thing, but
(13:43):
that's why we pay taxes. And the next time somebody
tells you that they don't care about government regulations and
that we live in a n any state. You remind
them of what it would be like if they ate
out at a restaurant without this kind of stuff. Those people,
we don't need regulating stuff, all right, sir, Then you
will be eating eyeball. Right, you'll be eating human eyeball
(14:05):
in your next Frankfurter. I will feed it to you myself. Uh. So,
the food Code today, just like the very first one
back in UH, is voluntary. UM. It is not federal law.
It is still up to those states to go out
and write their own rules. It aligns generally with the
(14:28):
federal regulations and what the FDA recommends. UH. And then
it gets a little more confusing because when it comes
down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no federal or
state inspector that comes in there. It's the city or
the county who's going to be carrying this out, and
they work with the state and then in turn the
federal government to kind of all be on the same page. Right. Yeah.
(14:51):
I think it's almost kind of like the government's the
one who has the funding to go actually look around
and survey and find the science and put these best
practices out. But it's the county or the city where
the where the the rubber meets the road the shoe,
the shoe meets the pavement, more like where the shoe
meets the Brunswick stew. That's so right, and not the
(15:12):
Brunswick stew. That's like one of the best things I
had at Barbecuh. Let's take a break, shall we. I'm
gonna go brush my tongue with a toothbrush, okay, and
I'll be right back. All right, okay, and we're back
(15:54):
and chuck. Let me smell your breath. How's that? Man?
That's nice? Streen? Yeah, if I do detectives at Tom's
toothpaste you used no, okay, what toothpaste do you use?
I use Uh, I'm using Crest right now? Which one
(16:14):
the orange one? No? Yeah? So the the the color
of the packaging is orange. But the type of mint
it's like called citrus mint. But you would never if
you didn't see that, you wouldn't be like, oh, this
is citrus mint. It's just its own type of very
pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah. I just used the regular uh,
(16:38):
not not the white, but I think it's like the
blue crests right now. And pro health I think, yeah, yeah,
pro health. And then a dude, use the listerine. Now.
I've been on that for a solid couple of years
because it's six and one six benefits in one. Why
are we talking about this? I don't know. Man, we're
not even getting paid for that. Maybe mine is Maybe
(17:02):
mine is Aqua Fresh. It's either Aqua Fresh or Crest,
which everyone makes. Citrus. Man, that's what I used. But
do you remember aim? Oh? Yeah, what was that? So
that stuff? I think it's still around. It actually doesn't
do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes, as
far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out in
three different colors like green, red, and white, and it
(17:23):
was just pretty. But it's bad toothpaste. I don't I'm
not a big fan of it, but I love looking
at it. How about that? I remember that? All right?
So back to food inspection, now that our mouths are clean. Uh.
There are usually three kinds of food safety inspections. You
got you got your rag. The one that's done in
(17:43):
the rag, it's known as a routine inspection, and that's
the one where they come in. Might be every six months,
might be every year and a half or so, depending
on some stuff. We'll get to here in a bit.
And that's the one where you go in and you
just see the thing on the wall that gives it
the score. That's the one where you're working in the
restaurant hunt and the and the owner and the manager
freak out. They're like, oh God, no, no, they do
(18:05):
the second they walked through the door. Although I will
say in New Jersey, where I worked at the store
in basking Ridge, New Jersey, we were always great and
they took it really seriously. Every time the inspector came by,
they were like, come on in, and that's the way
it should be. A big shout out to the store
in basking Ridge, New Jersey. Way to go to the store.
That place is great and that's how. And they had
(18:26):
a restaurant group and they have like six restaurants and
they're all done the right way. I don't think you
could really have a restaurant group without approaching food inspection
and health standards in that way too. Yeah, I mean
it's just dumb, not too and from what I saw too.
Um we also kind of did you read that mental
fass article I sent? Yeah, So one of the things
it's called twelve Secrets of restaurant health inspectors. One of
(18:48):
the things they point out is that usually the bigger
the chain, So whether it's a restaurant group on up
to a global chain like you know, like one of
those guys oh wow cheeks, but um, you're probably going
to see something close to a hundred every time. And
the reason why is because they have a lot of
(19:09):
skin in the game. They have a lot to lose,
right if, like they pointed out with Chipotle, like there
were one or two locations of Chipotle's where um that
some bad cilanto got some people sick with the cool I,
but all Chipotle suffered as a result of people just
stopped going. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and
um came probably pretty close to to going under there
(19:32):
for a little while. And I think they're still definitely
calling their way out from under it. So they don't
just rely on state, county, or city health inspectors. They
do their own. They hire their own third parties to
come in and and carry out health inspections much more
frequently than the government's doing, just to make sure that
(19:52):
they're up to standards. Yeah, so your your local fast
food chain is more likely to be super clean than
the mom and pop and in theory, but in my opinion,
you're also more likely going to find the kid in
the kitchen that goes, hey watch this. Yeah. Yeah, it's
definitely trade off, and that's that's it. Yeah, because it's
definitely not to say that, you know, mom and pop
places are are inherently unstafe. If it's a family business,
(20:16):
you're you have just as much skin in the game
as a global global restaurant chain because this is your
family's livelihood. So yeah, you're gonna take it seriously. So
getting back. The other two types of inspections real quick,
besides the routine are the follow up um investigation where
they do say like, all right, you need to fix
these things. I'll be back next Thursday, UM, or I'll
(20:38):
be back tomorrow depending on what's going on, or I'll
shut down your restaurant while you fix the stuff it's
so bad. Uh. And then their inspections that are triggered
by a consumer complaints. Yes, that's the one where they like, um,
use the bat signal, but instead of a bad it's
like a fork in the sky and then the restaurant
inspector swoops in. It's like I'm here. I'm here. Everybod
(21:00):
aretady calm down. Yeah. So I mentioned that people restaurants
will be inspected maybe every six months, maybe every year
a year and a half. They are. It's not willy nilly.
They are assessed a risk factor as an establishment by
the county or or the you know, whatever local municipality
is carrying this out. And that has to do with
(21:20):
a bunch of things. Um. Sometimes it's the kind of food.
Like if you're serving sushi, you might get inspected a
little more sushi shushi because you're serving raw fish. I
didn't say sushi that done, shushi that done today. No, no,
oh no, that's steep rule. Steep rule. I thought you.
I thought it was my tooth. Um. Or if you're
(21:43):
cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you might get inspected
a little more than a deli that just has you know,
pre prepared meats and foods. Yeah like that. Those cold
cuts are already cooked. It's not like you're they're serving
you raw turkey slices like it's already cooked. They're just
putting it together onto a sandwich. That's a low risk
um restaurant comparatively speaking. Yeah, you know, always gets me,
(22:06):
even though I love a euro is when I see
the see the thing on the spit next to the
heat lamp rotating around right, I always just think, how
how safe is that? I would guess if it's operating
in the United States? Safe safe enough. That's the whole
point of restaurant inspectors, so that you don't have to
(22:27):
ask that question. That you can look at that and say,
somebody who knows what they're doing has inspected that and
determined that that is not a threat to my health.
Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it. No,
I'm with you, I understand. I also want to say,
there are some places where you go in and you're like,
this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I
have no idea how this place is allowed to stay
(22:49):
like this, but it's still worth it. And I would
direct you to Ann's, A's ghetto burger right by your house. Yeah,
that's just down the street. Yes, have you have you
had one? I've never had an ans because I thought
that she left and it closed. But it's still going.
Is she's still running it? You know? I don't know.
She she had been threatening to like retire for twenty years.
(23:12):
Or something. But I knew she wanted to get balled
out and didn't want to just close it down, So
hopefully she was able to retire. That's that's my hope.
But is the Wall Street Journal said it was I
think maybe the best hamburger in the United States? The
Wall Street Journal ain't lyon. You know, yes, but if
you go there, that's like decades worth of Greece just
(23:33):
on the event around the or the backsplash, like the
stainless steel backsplash or whatever splatter guard behind the griddle,
and you're like, just how does she how did she
get away with that? And then you take a bite
of it, and you're like, oh, because it matters not
at all compared to this burger. Uh, well, maybe she
is compliant, because that is the second risk factor involved
(23:56):
with how often you're gonna get inspected, which is it,
do you have a list of complaints or a record
of violations on your record, then you're gonna be on
their frequent visitor list, right, you know? Yeah? Yeah, And
especially if you've ever been the source of a food
born illness, you're on your on your you're a high
(24:16):
risk automatically probably permanently. Yeah, I would think so, and
depending on where you are, you know, like you're gonna
get lots of visits after that. Like that's probably aside
from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a food
boarding illness is probably the worst thing that can happen
in your restaurant, I would guess, um, and you know,
(24:38):
whether you're a new restaurant, well, if you're a new
restaurant in particular, I should say I think the standard
is is that depending on where you fall as far
as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a
deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood,
you're assigned like an initial risk assessment, and then depending
(25:01):
on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say
they're gonna come visit every three months for the first year,
or if you're a deli, they might come once every
year and a half. And then depending on how you
perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are
basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that
(25:23):
that schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say
that deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently
every eighteen months, they're gonna start getting inspected every twelve
months or every six months. Where that sushi place that's
getting inspected every three months or six months. If if
it's just painfully obvious that they are top notch pros
(25:44):
who are taking this quite seriously and never get caught
for anything, then that three or six months may end
up turning into a year. Who knows. Yeah, you may
have heard reports on the news too that UM food
inspectors have racist policies where they will go after ethnic
restaurants more often. No, I hadn't heard that, is that right? Yeah,
I've seen I've seen reports on stuff like that that
(26:07):
they get inspected more frequently if you're like, have an
ethnic restaurant, that's pretty rotten. But there is a food
safety expert at North Carolina State named Ben Chapman that
says there's really no data to back that up. He said,
but there could be biases through consumer complaint systems. Uh.
And they did a sort of just a a snapshot
(26:29):
from Yelp reviews, which say what you want about Yelp reviews,
they're pretty much the worst thing ever, right, But if
you look at Yelp reviews, you do a search for
food poisoning, and close to seventy of the time they
were ethnic restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. So
I see, this food is weird. It is possible recognize
(26:52):
it that some bias comes in through that. But that
makes sense. Then chuck like if if if yelp is
um a proxy for the number of times somebody might
call in um a complaint. That's one of the ways
that the food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant
is when somebody the public, said, you know, calls and
says something or complaints. UM. So I mean that that
(27:16):
makes utter, in complete sense. Um, have you ever called
and complained about a restaurant? Have you ever called the
health department? I never have either, and they're actually after
researching this article, I was like, there, I can think
of it. At least one time when I could have
and should have called just got undercooked chicken and um,
you mean I both got very sick for like the
(27:38):
whole weekend, and I kept calling this place like like,
what are you guys gonna do about? Is you have
to do something? And um, they just got less and
less interested the more frequently I called him by the
by like the fourth or fifth time, was like, we're
still suffering. I just wanted to let you know we're
laying around throwing up. And they didn't do anything about it.
(28:00):
There was no, um, we're sorry that that. I think
they actually didn't believe me. Maybe, But now that I've
read this, so I'm like, I totally should have called
the health department on those guys. It was in Atlanta,
I think I remember that. Actually we got so we
were sick for an entire week, yes, right across from
where we used to work actually, and they could not
(28:24):
have cared less. And that's what ticked me off. Oh
you were calling the restaurant over, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I thought you called the health inspector over. But now
now I'm like, why wouldn't Why didn't we just call
it health inspector? Now I would call for sure, now
that I've done this research, because it's not like like
what you're doing is helping other people from from the before,
(28:44):
from the same fate befalling. Yeah, you're not being a rat, right,
which is another thing that health inspectors look out for.
All right, well let's talk about that. When you when
this is how that this goes down. They're unannounced visits.
Like I said, so I've worked at UM. I've worked
it I don't know, like probably four or five places
(29:05):
over the years, and two of them were pretty bad.
The aforementioned barbecue place and then where I worked in
college wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a
typical like college town Mexican joint UM, but it wasn't
like the super professional other restaurants that I've worked at.
But in those first two places, I remember when the
(29:27):
restaurant inspector walked through the door, a panic set in. UH.
Invariably the one of the like the GM or whoever
the manager was, would immediately confront UH in a nice
not confront but greet the person and send you know,
the understanding was someone go back to the kitchen and
tell everyone that the inspector is here. And judging from
(29:50):
that Mental Floss article you sent, that's exactly how it works.
And for that reason, the very first thing a good
health inspector does is kind of barged through there and
say I'm going straight into the kitchen right the second right,
because they know what's going on, right, that's they have
to or else a whole bunch of violations get covered
up really quickly, very quickly, And so in that mental
(30:12):
Flass article, basically they said they needed to do like
a a brisk like run walk through the kitchen as
fast as they could. But it's also you you scals,
like what do you do and like just stand there
and freeze. That's what they should do, is be like
everybody phrase and then like have their finger and thumb
(30:32):
in the shape of a gun because I don't think
they're allowed to actually carry guns. Well, this one health
inspector in the Mental Flass things said, we want to
see the things that won't be there in another three
to four minutes. But that's the thing. But I mean
it could be anything like there's there's like, um, if
you are sitting there making food and you have like
(30:53):
a cup of coke, right, you're not supposed to have
that there or in your cell phone in the kitchen.
It's another big one. I'll bet that is probably the
most frequent violation today. They're covered in poop. Do you
ever see something like if I have you ever just
stopped and looked at people on the street like with
their phones, like they'll just be stopped mid something like
(31:15):
they have like a shovel like propped up against their
their shoulder, just looking at their phone with their mouth
hanging open, and it's like crazy, we're turning into like
a society of zombies. Man, how do you stare at
your phone? I've seen you do that. You do it
in a smarter looking like I do the thing where
I'm like stroking my chin thoughtfully. I've got like one
(31:36):
eyebrow arch Alright, So the first thing they inspect, obviously
the kitchen. The the manager or the owner or whoever
is there on point is with the inspector the whole time,
because they're saying like hey, like little things like that
catchup bottles disgusting, Like why don't you go ahead and
have someone clean it up? And I won't dock your point,
(31:56):
but just get it clean. And the guy wipes it
down and he's like, no, that brand. It's so we
get some hinds in heresgusting. But the first thing they
inspect or the dynamic areas, which are the kitchen food
preparation areas. UM basically anywhere where there's food actively out
is the first place they'll go, right, That's that's the
(32:19):
static area dynamics. The dynamic okay, and then you start
with the hundred points. By the way, I don't know
if we mentioned that, which I think is kind of optimistic.
It's saying like, I want to believe the best in you.
So everybody starts with a hundred and then we start
deducting from there. Yeah, then it just gets sad. So Um.
One of the first things they're looking for is employee
(32:40):
hygiene because remember what you mentioned, like way back and
when the Food and Drug Act was created, the Food
Code was first established. Um, there were a lot of
basic tenants that were put forth back then, and one
of them was, you're the people who cook the food
need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one
of the big things that the health inspectors looking for,
like are they wearing gloves, which, by the way, is
(33:02):
not to say that if an employees wearing gloves that
you're totally covered. Um, the gloves are supposed to be
a fail safe to good hand washing, So you want
them to be washing their hands very frequently and then
wearing gloves on top of that, but then on top
of that not doing things like like using their cell
phone with the gloves on because you've just automatically contaminated
(33:25):
them and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at
that point. Right, So there's a lot of hygiene things
that are are being taken into account. But how do
you how do you tell whether people are washing their
hands when you're just walking into a kitchen. Of course
they're going to wash their hands in front of you
and the way that they're supposed to be, but how
do you know they're doing it routinely? Chuck? Well, yeah,
(33:48):
and we should say that there is a way you're
supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse them off
and just dry them with the towel that's sitting by
the sink or just below on them. You rents, You
put on the soap, you scrub for twenty seconds, then
you dry off with a one use towel and good old,
unsustainable made out of tree paper towel. Uh yeah, Or
(34:09):
if you're a really fancy restaurant, you can just have
like cashmere towels laying around as long as you faw
them away afterwards. Right, you have to go away. But
you're a little trick. I know where you were leading.
How you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant
inspector in the middle Flass article said, they go in
the first thing they do because it takes them a
couple of hours at a just sort of a normal
size restaurant, um, four or five hours at a big
(34:31):
hotel restaurant. He said, he puts an X on the
paper towels, and if he goes back at the end
of his inspection and that X is still in the
paper towel, then he knows hands are not being washed. Right,
very sneaking, pretty clever. Yeah, uh so, I guess we
just gave it away though, So now all the people
are going to go check their paper towel rolls. There
(34:53):
are other ways. Um, yeah, that was just a setup
to nudge them into the actual way he's telling, like
wash your hands. Um. Food is another big one too, Right.
You want to make sure that the food is being
properly stored and properly cooked. And apparently there is a
danger zone um between I think like zero and a
(35:14):
hundred and forty that you want to hit or that
you want to stay outside of. So basically you want
your food, especially like um, raw meat, to be stored
at a temperature frozen, right or else kept at forty
degrees fairheight four degrees celsius or below for fridges. Um,
And then when you cook it, you have to cook
(35:36):
it to at least a hundred and sixty degrees internal
temperature for beef, pork, all those guys, and then a
hundred forty five for fish. And if a restaurant is
not doing that, that's a big that's a big one,
as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the best way to
think about food storage is without getting into the specific temperatures.
Is if it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it
(35:57):
should be cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be
it should be hot. Is that middle ground is where
you're in big trouble exactly. They talked about lukewarm being
the big enemy, right, not not that's never good lukewarm.
I'm trying to think of a time when lukewarm is
preferable with anything. Um, it just sounds gross. I like
(36:20):
my food really hot too. Yeah. Like, that's the one
thing I will send something back is if it's was
clearly made a little earlier than the rest of the
party at the table and it's sort of lukewarm, I
might no, man, I want I want steam coming off
this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah they do, and then they're like, oh,
I guess you want a little spit on that too.
(36:41):
Apparently soup should be uh Like, the way you reheat
things is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick sto.
You don't just throw it out every night. You put
it back in the walk in so some jerk can
step in it. But when you bring soups and brawls
back uh to heat, you have to reboil them entirely
(37:01):
right from their refrigerated state, which makes sense, but that's
never very good for um food. If it's already prepared
once you reboil it, that's that's probably you're just gonna
want to throw that away then, yeah, man, it toughens
everything up, or else it overcooks it. It's already been
cooked once, so when you bring it to a boil,
(37:21):
you're really cooking it again. And for food boorn illnesses,
that's a good way to treat it, but it doesn't
necessarily make for the most appetizing food. All Right. I
don't know if I agree with that, but that's all right,
that's what I'm going with. Uh, frozen meat, you don't
just say, hey, Jimmy, throw that frozen bird out on
the table and leave it there until this evening. Right.
(37:43):
But you don't just leave food out to thaw there.
There are proper ways of following and bringing things back
to the correct temperature. Right. And then so let's say
you have a place where you're cutting up that thowed
chicken that was properly thought um, and then you set
the knife down and somebody else picks it up and
they start cutting lettuce with it. That's cross contamination. That
(38:04):
is extremely dangerous because as you know, very few people
cook their lettuce before they eat it in a salad.
It's raw and so now it has raw chicken juice
on the lettuce that you're eating raw and uncooked, and
you can die from that. UM. So cross contamination is
a big one they look for. They also UM it
can be a little more simple, like with something like
(38:25):
UM silverware. From what I saw, if the silverware is
dirty or smudgy, UM, that is a big problem because
that means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's
a lot of that's like a big red flag that UM.
Apparently health health inspectors will will tell you that if
the silver ware is dirty. It usually is indicative of
(38:45):
just a dirty restaurant in general. Um. And I've always
heard I don't know if it's an urban legend or not,
but uh, you know, like the just the plastic soda
cups that like a lot of restaurants will have. Um,
have you ever heard that it's not possible for them
to get to the temperature needed to kill any bacteria
(39:08):
on them, because they'll melt otherwise, so that when you
drink out of them, they've not really been sanitized from before.
I have not heard that. But as as someone who
has worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm
going to watch these things that this temperature you just
throw everything through there. Yeah, you don't have any choice
in what temperatures. It's all prescribed for you. You're just
(39:30):
basically putting them on the tray and sliding them through,
pulling the door down, and then it washes them and
you lift the door up and pull them out. Yes,
and I will say one of my dreams that is
to have one of those in my home. Those I
can't remember what they're called, but they're wonderful. It's pretty great. Yeah,
it just watches everything like super fast. So that's the
dynamic areas, right. There's also the static areas, where it's
(39:51):
things like, um, well, the dish washing area actually apparently
is a static area doesn't change very much. Um where
you store cleaning products that kind of stuff. I guess
you get points deducted if you're cleaning products or your
toxic chemicals are not in there marked original package, because
you could they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar
(40:12):
or something like that. Yeah, and they're gonna check. The
static areas include a lot of things that you don't
think would even fall into the purview of a restaurant inspector.
They're gonna look at your HVAC systems and your bents
and your smoke detectors. Uh, they're gonna look at your
dining room and the floors and the ceilings, and your
ceiling vans and your dumpster behind and then your grease trap.
(40:34):
Like they look at everything, right, which is good. And
another one that they take a look at that I
think is probably a big problem for restaurants in a
lot of ways are ice machines. Um. The there's a
lot of parts to ice machines that are out of view.
This thing scared me in mental flaws. Now that can
like grow mold pretty easy, and not just the ice
(40:56):
machine right where they're like scooping ice out, which is
another thing too, Like there better be an ice scoop right, Um,
it can grow mold in the ice machine. But also
those shoots where ice comes out of like a like
a beverage dispenser, those are usually serviced by the company
that that makes the beverages that it's dispensing, and so
(41:18):
it would be up to that company to clean those out,
which means that they get even less attention than the
rest of the restaurant. So the next time you're getting
like ice out of beverage dispenser, like get your flashlight
out of your pocket and look up there, uh and
see if you see any mold and then just raise
holy hell if you do. Yeah. And I'm not a
big fan of the serve yourself soft drink stations anyway,
(41:42):
for you know, out there with the public. I don't
think the public should ever have access to something. That's why,
well that's not the reason, but buffets are just so
gross and creepy. I haven't been to a buffet, and
good lord, I don't know twenty years, but you should
the thought of a buffet. I know they have the
sneeze guard, but uh, people like scooping in and serving
(42:03):
themselves their own food from a drough is so weird
and gross an archaic that I can't believe people still
do that. Well. I mean also, like even if you're
using like a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop
something out, so did the person before you, right, And
that means you're touching the safe serving spoon and then
(42:24):
going back and using your hands to go eat. So
you just touched whatever the other person had on their hands,
and now you're coming in contact with your mouth. It's
a flawed system, for sure. It is, because what you're
saying is, I'm going to count on the three hundred
people that have eaten here today before me are all
completely hygienic. All their hands have been washed. Yeah, Timothy,
(42:47):
poop hands isn't among them. No one did a single
gross thing, like if a tater tot fell off the spoon,
flicked it back in with their finger, Like, no one
did anything wrong at all. I I just no way,
not even like whole foods or someplace. Those are all
gross to me. Oh yeah, whole foods would count with
that too. Huh, Although I do like a build your
(43:08):
own salad thing every once in a while. That's the
exception good salad bar. Yeah, it's tough to turn down.
I'm with. Well, let's take a break, think a little
more about salads, and we'll be right back. All right,
(43:49):
we're back, Charles. Let's talk about point deductions. A. Yes,
let's remember we said that restaurant inspectors are very optimistic
and they start out with a hundred. It just goes
down from there. And again, you know, since these are
done like city by city or county by county, like
everybody has like their own methods or whatever. But usually,
and I think the f d a UM has pointed out,
(44:13):
like there are five things that you're really looking for,
like five general categories UM improper UM storage of food
as far as temperature goes, inadequately cooked food, UM, equipment
that's contaminated, sources that are unsafe, uh, that are an
(44:34):
unsafe supply of the ingredients, right, so like if it
turns out like the goat is coming from their buddies farm,
that might be a problem. And then personal hygiene of
the people who work there, right, And so depending on
some of those, especially if there's multiple ones of these,
these are big ones, um, they will probably be a
(44:55):
high priority type one or critical violation any of those. Yes,
And then there's also other ones where like this is
not that big of a deal, but it's definitely something
that needs to be paid attention to. Those fall after
those usually and it can be anything from like a
dentic can that could conceivably contain botuli is um but
definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away,
(45:17):
to um, there being a hole in the screen door
that's left open for some reason. Yeah, and these uh.
As far as deducting individual points that you'll see on
the wall when you walk in and if you don't
look at that piece of paper when you walk into
a restaurant, I don't know what's going on in your brain.
You should always do that. Um. But like a static
violation like hey, there were some chairs that had bad legs,
(45:40):
your ceiling fan was pretty dusty, those will be like
a point each, maybe a couple of points for a
minor infraction like you're cleaning product, like I found a roach,
you know, the the chef has a cell phone in
the kitchen. That's a couple of points all the way
up to four and five points, and those that's when
you're talking about your your fridge is broken and it
(46:01):
is not up to temperature, and everything in there is
at risk, and that's when they can actually shut you
down until you get it fixed. Yeah, which I got
the impression from this article that that is it's a
rarity that the health inspector wants to air on the
side of the restaurant staying open and solving everything as
quickly as it can, while also it's business not suffering unnecessarily,
(46:25):
so if you're if your restaurant gets shut down temporarily,
like that violation was significant enough that that people were
at an immediate risk of getting sick from visiting your restaurant, exactly. Yeah,
it's a big deal. In other words, as it's as
big a deal as you would think. Yeah, but with
those point deductions, if you go in and you see
like a seventy two on a restaurant score sheet, it's
(46:49):
probably not twenty eight individual small violations, right. There are
probably some four and five pointers in there, and you
should probably think about eating there or you know it
says in the art in this article. You can go
to the website and really break down because those aren't
for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily.
But um, if you do look at them, if you
(47:10):
can get close to them, you can actually look and
see the little category for each thing. Um. Sometimes behind
the register they may not like you poking around. Well,
the health health departments usually put them on the web
these days. Yeah, that's I'll saying, Like, you can investigate online,
but in the restaurant itself, it is marked. It's you know,
(47:31):
a bunch of tiny little letters and categories, and you
can give it a look. And uh, you know, as
long as I wouldn't spend too much time there, like,
just go by that initial score. And if you're really like, yeah,
I gotta see what those eighteen points were deducted for,
I would just turn around and walk out, right, especially
if there's an identical place, like right across the street. Um.
(47:54):
But that is a pretty good point because when you
think about it, most people just see that score prominently displayed,
whether it's like an A or a B or a C,
or like a eighty five or a ninety eight or whatever. Um.
And it's not really meant to be shorthand for the public.
It's I mean, I guess it isn't a way where
(48:16):
it's like, hey, buddy, you're you're really taking a gamble
here at like seventy um. But when it's really high up,
it does seem to be kind of an indicator like
this one's a okay. In my book, that's not really
what the restaurant uh inspection report is supposed to be.
It's supposed to be a lot more granular than that.
(48:37):
And so to really tell whether you're running a risk
at eating in a restaurant or not, you actually do
have to go to the trouble of looking up what
the violations were and then even then judging for yourself,
because short of the health inspector deciding to shut the
restaurant down and making the decision for you that you
can't go there, they're not they're not saying like don't
(48:57):
eat here. Like if it passes, if it passes inspection
enough to stay open, then as far as the county
Health Department is concerned, it's good enough for you to
be eating there. But that might not really jibe with
your own definition. So to get that that information. You
have to go find out what they're why points were deducted. Yeah,
and you can't. Uh, it's either the mental plus or
(49:18):
our own article point out that just because someplace has
a bad rating doesn't mean they haven't fixed things and
it's fine now. And just because as a great rating
doesn't mean they're not in violation that day. There. These
inspectors come every six months to a year for a
couple of hours during a lunch shift, and it is
a snapshot of what occurred on that day. Right, So
(49:41):
there's no like fail safe for a consumer. You just
gotta you know, did the best you can, cross your fingers.
You just roll the dice and everything's okay in there,
or just cook at home and boil everything including your
lettuce boiled lettuce delicious. What oh, I didn't know if
I was missing on and then you got anything else
(50:02):
on restaurant inspections. Um. Just this one more little tidbit
from Mental Floss that I thought it was pretty great
is that this one restaurant inspector said that he can
smell cockroaches in the air at this point. Yeah, that's
a real problem with cockroaches, though, don't you think to
(50:22):
be able to smell. I guess it'd be an infestation,
is what he's He said, you can walk in, take
a deep breath, and he said it's kind of a nutty,
oily smell that you after years on the job, I
can identify it. It's like I still get hungry every
time I smell it. I got a lot of roaches
in my house right now, and it's really pissing me off.
(50:43):
A clean house. You know, it's not gross, it's just
this summer was just real, kind of muggy and dank.
And do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in
your attic or basement? No? I don't know where they're
coming from, Like we see him outside all over the place,
so I don't. Maybe it's at Swale Pond from Perman
Culture episode. Maybe. Yeah. The Perman Culture lady was like,
(51:07):
I forgot to tell you you're gonna have roaches. It's
the only new thing, right, I don't know. Man, good
good luck and god speed, though, go find the most
sustainable way to treat it. I'll be interested to hear
you come up with. Well, so far it's been the
flip flap method. Oh poor roaches. No. Uh, If you
want to know more about cockroaches or restaurant health inspections
(51:28):
or flip flops. You can type those words in the
search bar a house of works dot com. And I
said that, which means it's time for listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this a great, gross way to finish
this gross ish podcast. Excellent. Hey, guys, wanted to regale
you with the story of how you two contributed. My
fantastic relationship my wonderful girlfriend last summer and follows traveling
(51:49):
across the country, camping, going to national parks, and I
wound up in moab Utah at canyon lands and arches
and met a smart, fun girl at a brewery and
we made a date to go hiking. The next day,
I picked her up and we went on a wonderful
little hike and disaster struck. It turns out months of
cheddar brought worst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system,
(52:10):
and I felt horrible, and I had an inescapable urge
to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, I
was miles away from a leif and I ran out
of excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey,
look at that arch again. Oh uh, so I had
to tell her the horrible truth on our first date,
and I was sure it would ruin it. Eventually, I
(52:31):
made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor people aside,
and uh safely made it back to town. But I
was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything. On
the way back to town, she asked if she could
put a podcast on, and she played me your episode
about poop. No nice, how about that? She's got a
good sense of human great sense of humor. I've never
(52:51):
been as happy to hear two men describing fecal matter.
At that point, I knew anyone could spend a date
almost pooping in their pants into an excuse to share
their podcasts favorite As a keeper, we've been together over
a year now. We love listening to your new episodes
while we hike in camp and uh and poop. I
guess they've got to remember the love seat that Saturday
Night Live commercial. It was like the two toilets facing
(53:13):
each other's You could hold hands while you poop. Exactly.
I couldn't be happy to find a new favorite thing
to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at the
same time. So I want to thank you guys if
you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year. We
don't know yet. UM I'll be buying tickets as soon
as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom, and
he said, if you do read this in the air,
please give a shout out to Alice. Nice Tom and Alice. Yeah,
(53:36):
way to go kids. Uh, thanks for writing in Tom
nice story. Uh. If you want to get in touch
with this like Tom did, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast the house. Stuff works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(54:01):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
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