DOH Letter Grades in NYC
The Board of Health approved the new regulation that requires restaurants to post inspection letter grades at the entrance. This has been the topic of converation at many safety & sanitation meetings during the past few months, and will no doubt continue to be a hot button. My issue with the required postings is that no supporting information is required. Meaning, if a restaurant posts a “B”, there isn’t (to my knowledge) a system in place to post the reasons for that grade. Of course, customers can look it up on the DOH website, but when you’re walking down a street, looking for a place to eat, if an “A” restaurant is right next to a “B”, which will you chose?
The law doesn’t go into effect until July and the detailed procedures/rules haven’t been decided yet, which means there may be room to save it. In my opinion, the grades should be determined by the points for critical issues, not general. For example, having a missing lightbulb in a refridgerator isn’t a critical problem, but having a roach infestation is. I admit that I’d want to know if a restaurant has a fruit fly problem, or if employees are consistantly failing to wash their hands before handling food, but I also work on the other side, and I know what real kitchens are like.
To the best of my knowledge, in most top restaurants, chef’s regularly handle ready-to-eat foods without gloves. Is this unsanitary? Yes, but it’s also part of common practice. And I do understand that it is possible for this to lead to some sort of epidemic, but it’s also a lot more difficult to really judge the consistency and texture of delicate meats and other edibles with latex gloves on. There are just certain industry practices that may not conform to the DOH standards, but that are widely accepted.
Some supporters have commented on this new regulation, mentioning the fact that California already has a similar system in place. However, it’s to my understanding that in CA, points are not deducted for each related occurance, but only once for a specific violation, depending, of course. For example, if there are 6 dented cans, you will only be deducted the point for having dented cans once. On the other hand, in NYC, you would be deducted a point for each can, losing a total of 6 points. This further escalates the number of points to be deducted, giving a false impression of unsanitary conditions, where really it is one problem that needs to be addressed on a greater scale (the employee needs to be retrained on separating dented cans, for example).
It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. It’ll also be interesting, come the summertime, to see which restaurants are still standing, and which are struggling. Not only will the increased number of fines hurt the restaurants, but the lost business due to an uninformed, not completely transparent, grading system will also have an effect on the already struggling eateries. Let’s hope my faves are A’s! (And my place of work, as I would like to still have a job…)
