Disclaimer: The August 2007 list is what Contact 5 used to craft their investigation. The "Disciplinary Activity Report" contains the restaurants on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s list.
Read the Statements from RestaurantsReported by: Shannon Cake
Photographer: Jim Sitton
Producer: Israel Perez
Safety and sanitation—when in you’re in your own kitchen—it’s something you can control. But when you’re dining in restaurants, it’s hard to know what’s happening behind the kitchen door.
This is a story Contact 5 has covered for years. Now, Channel 5 is launching a three part investigation, travelling to the corners of our viewing area, and getting answers from those responsible for restaurant sanitation in Tallahassee.
Our Contact 5 team of producers spent 12 weeks dining in local restaurants and going undercover. We got a glimpse inside kitchens with serious sanitation violations.
With retired state inspector, Roy Costa, Shannon Cake and the Contact 5 team visited some restaurant kitchens.
Shannon: “On one of your recent inspections---we see 30 to 50 dead roaches near container lids, roaches at your wait station, 30 live roaches on a glue trap. Do you have a roach problem here, it appears you do?”
Roy: “You’ve got a dead roach inside the light fixture---an empty egg case.”
Shannon: “What do you mean an empty egg case?”
Roy: “Do you see that little case there alongside the roach, that’s the egg case, that’s how they reproduce.”
The sanitation concerns didn’t end there, in restaurants all over South Florida the Contact 5 team found flies, roaches and fixtures coated with droppings of old food.
In a 2005 Contact 5 investigation, Channel 5 uncovered similar problems inside local restaurants. Back then, we found problems like waiters---picking through french fries before serving them to a table, and racks of chicken and pork sitting out in the South Florida heat.
“It’s not just an upset tummy…some of these things will put you in the hospital or even kill you,” said Roy Costa, a former state inspector and owner of Environmental Health Solutions.
Armed with a list of restaurants that the state considers sanitation violators, we dined in establishments from Sebastian to Delray, some out west to Wellington and Belle Glade and more along the coast in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter.
The Contact 5 team even drove north to Tallahassee and sat down with restaurant division head, Bill Veach. We asked Veach what poses the greatest danger to the dining public?
“We consider anything that has the potential to create a food-born illness very serious.” Veach said. “[Things like] food not being held at proper temperatures, sanitation, handling, preparation of food.”
Shannon: “Roach activity?”
“Very serious. Rodent activity and pest activity will get you an emergency suspension,” Veach said.
We showed Veach some of the video our team collected inside a local restaurant.
Shannon: “Would it bother you know that there were roaches crawling up the walls of the kitchen? We found palmetto bugs dead underneath the shelves.”
Veach: “In any restaurant—that would bother me to know…and anytime it’s been witnessed we’d want to know about that.”
Our undercover camera picked up problems like a restaurant-employee grabbing a trash can, then, without washing his hands, he reaches for a hoagie roll---leaving those trash-can germs spread out on your sandwich.
Costa has been in and out of restaurant kitchens for 20 years and said violations like the one Channel 5 found in our undercover video must end. Today, Costa preaches restaurant sanitation through his new company—“Environmental Health Solutions.”
“Protecting the public has got to be the number 1 priority of a restaurant, it has to start there,” Costa said.
With guidance from the list of state violators and Roy Costa Channel 5’s team stopped by Pascalli’s, an Italian restaurant in Loxahatchee.
As we approached the back entrance, we found cardboard boxes swarming with flies, a mop in a bucket of water with a dead lizard floating inside.
“It’s a pretty nasty situation—right at the back door,” Costa said. “This is the reason we don’t like to see trash and garbage left outside like this.”
State inspectors cited Pascalli’s for failing to store and hold potentially hazardous food at proper temperatures—that can be dangerous because bacteria can grow on the food and make you sick.
Manager George Torieri told us it was a misunderstanding—a one time problem.
“We’re starting to dispute this—because what happened was one of our units went down a little bit—the reach-in units,” Torieri said.
But Pascalli’s inspection history shows the restaurant has been cited for similar problems in the past.
Shannon: “Look with me here—I’m not making this up—in November of last year you had a similar violation with your walk in.”
Torieri: “That’s the lasagna ma’am, when you pull the lasagna out, it’s so hot I can’t put a sticker on it.”
While Torieri cleaned up the trash at his back doorstep, we told him about what our camera picked up when we dined inside the restaurant.
We told him about the undercover video of the restaurant worker grabbing a trash can and then grabbing a hoagie roll—which happened to be in his kitchen.
Shannon: “Is that a problem to you? He picked up a trash can moved it across the room and then grabbed a hoagie roll.
Torieri: “Yes absolutely…I don’t think it’s right. We have meetings constantly all the time here—new employees, we go through this process constantly with people, you know, I mean I wash my hands like 30 to 40 times a day. No-one has ever gotten sick, it just takes a while to straighten some of that stuff out.”
Our next stop on the state’s list, Ambrosia in West Palm Beach. In July, Ambrosia was shut down for 24-hours to clean up, what inspectors called a cockroach infestation.
Managers told Contact 5 they paid a $500 fine and completed a special restaurant training class.
Since then, the state has given Ambrosia clean bill of health.
But as we arrived, our cameras spotted the back door standing wide-open.
According to Roy Costa, an open door is an invitation to pests. It’s also a violation---according to state inspection rules.
“You’re not gonna be able to keep roaches out of your restaurant if you leave your back door open. Also he’s got a pretty good gap under his rear [screen] door,” Costa said.
When Contact 5 pointed out those problems, Ambrosia’s manager promised to fix them right away.
Another spot where pests were a problem, Tin Tin restaurant, on Forest Hill Boulevard. In June, state inspectors found the “presence of insects or rodents” and listed critical violations for failing to make outer openings insect and rodent proof.
With citations like those you would think a restaurant would fix the problem once and for all.
But when our team stopped by for lunch in September—the restaurant’s front and back doors were standing wide-open. Our undercover camera picked up a clear shot from the restaurant’s front lobby, through the kitchen, into the alley out back. Again, Costa told us, leaving the doors open, is like welcoming the pests into the kitchen.
While the doors were standing open, our camera also spotted what appeared to be poultry, dangling on a hook—right by the back door—exposed to the South Florida heat.
“We would never allow a meat product to be stored at room temp whether it’s hanging from a pipe or sitting on a table or whatever.” Costa said. “That’s a bacterial growth issue and that leads to food born illness.”
At the back door, we asked to speak to someone in charge but managers said they would not speak to us.
So across town at China Tokyo, Shannon Cake, using her very limited Chinese vocabulary, asked to speak to a manager.
China Tokyo has received 32 critical violations this year for things like:
• Dead roaches under a steamer.
• 30-50 dead roaches on bulk container lids.
• Live roaches at a prep table.
• 15 live roaches at the dishwasher.
When the manager showed up, he invited our team inside and we were surprised by what our cameras found. We showed that video to Florida’s restaurant inspection head, Bill Veach.
"That's not acceptable in a kitchen,” Veach said.
Disclaimer
There is more than one China Tokyo restaurant in our viewing area.
The restaurant featured in our report is in Wellington, FL.
The August 2007 list is what was used to craft our investigation. The list contains the restaurants on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s “Disciplinary Activity Report.”
Note: Disciplinary Activity Report constitutes that an Administrative Complaint has been clerked by the Department Of Business and Professional Regulation. Not all restaurants on this list were sanitation violators. Some failed to comply in ways that were not considered sanitation violations.
