A daring escape, a denial and one apology. Our Dirty Dining crew visits three South Florida Restaurants closed down for cockroaches. All three restaurant managers react in very different ways.
Subway Restaurant 9804 S. Military Trail, Boynton Beach, FL.
We started our day at the Boynton Trail Center in Boynton Beach. That's where a Subway sandwich restaurant was temporarily closed on January 14 when a state inspector spotted 8 live roaches. Hardly the worst offender we've ever encountered but if they get closed we let you know.
As soon as we walked in you could see the manager was thinking about bolting. I asked "are you the manager?"
"I am a manager hold on," she replied as she walked to the back room.
She never told me her name but her name tag read "Gail." I immediately suspected that was the last time we would see her. After a minute I called out, "Gail?"
Finally after a minute I heard someone yell from the back "No comment."
Here's how it went from there:
Me: This is gonna make it harder.
Me: It's 8 cockroaches...Ya know?
Subway manager: It wasn't cockroaches. They were little roaches.
Me: Well they're still cockroaches even if they're little.
Subway Manager: What are we gonna be on dirty dining?
Me: Yeah
Subway manager: This is so embarrassing.
Me: It happens to a lot of restaurants.
But she would not come out of the back room. So, on Gail's behalf, I can report no violations were found during the follow up inspection at this Subway restaurant..
Manhattan Pizza 2600A Broadway Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL.
Manhattan Pizza in West Palm Beach also had a problem with roaches but a man who told us he was the manager, either had no knowledge of it or, just didn't want to talk about it.
"We did not have no temporary closure. Who told you that?" he asked.
"Uh, the state" I replied.
More specifically the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. The same agency we pull public records from every week for Dirty Dining.
I showed the manager the reports and told him "The reason you guys were shut down was because of the roach activity."
"That's not true" he said once again.
"So you're telling me that this is just wrong?" I asked. At that point the manager decided the conversation was over and walked away.
Still I wanted to make sure we were right. The world is an imperfect place and mistakes do happen. So we requested a copy of the actual inspection from DBPR. It showed 11 violations. One of them for "approximately" 16 "live roaches" and an emergency closure order for Manhattan Pizza on January 11, 2016. Oh, and the inspection report was signed by the owner of Manhattan Pizza.
Sport Page Bar & Grill 535 25th Street West Palm Beach, FL.
For our final stop this week we didn't need to go too far. Sports Page Bar & Grill is also in West Palm. In fact it's just a hop, skip and a jump down 25th Street from Manhattan Pizza.
Sports Page also had a problem with roaches, according to the state, that lead to a temporary closure January 12. We walked up to the bartender and I said, "Just looking for somebody that can talk to us about the temporary closure."
"Sure I'll get somebody for you," replied a very friendly woman behind the counter.
A few minutes later manager Vik Hira came out to explain how he handled the roaches.
"Pretty much just had to clean up. Clean up the entire place. Called my pest control company. They came in, they sprayed down everywhere, they fogged the place," Hira said.
And according to the state it worked. No violations were reported in the follow up inspection.
"Anything to say to your customers about the problem?" I asked. "Nothing really, I'm just sorry about everything," Hira replied.
It can be just that easy.
All three of the restaurants profiled this week passed their follow up inspections and are open for business. If you want to know how your favorite restaurant fared this week you can check out our database provided by our news partners at the TcPalm.Com.