Famous Vegas restaurant closes after employee hand-washing violations

[T_R_Oglodyte]

I can hardly wait for @ScoopKona response!!!

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/vegas-restaurant-closes-employee-handwashing-21305413.php

 

[mjm1]

Sorry to hear that they didn’t stay current and are closing. Being locals, we had planned to eat there some time. Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t. Fortunately we have some great options even closer to home.

 

[ScoopKona]

Fremont Street is a pit. Old properties. Lower pay. And a "give a [excrement]" attitude on the part of the workers.

The first thing the health inspectors do when they come to visit is ask for the health card of every chef and line cook. After being given their cards back, the inspectors give a demerit for every employee who does not immediately wash hands. This is SOP. The next thing they do is look at the can opener. That's almost ALWAYS a demerit -- even at good restaurants.

Good restaurants don't fear the health department. They're already running a tight ship.

Half the restaurants in Las Vegas are petri dishes and examples of "this is why cross contamination kills people." They have some of the best restaurants in the country. And a lot of the worst. At least the Health Department is good about busting the bad ones. We finally got a good inspector here on Hawaii Island. She's cracking skulls. A dozen restaurants closed down. And a few that aren't opening because "thousands of roaches" isn't something a restaurant bounces back from. (Nor do they deserve to. They should be charged criminally for endangering the public.)

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Good restaurants don't fear the health department. They're already running a tight ship.

Generally true. That was certainly the case when I did sanitary inspections of public water systems. I could tell much about the facility from first encounter.

The only caveat I would put on your statement regards the attitude of the inspector. My approach going in was that the operator and I were a team, with a shared goal of protecting public health. The good facilities welcomed me because they could learn from me - and I also felt that I could learn from them. One of my favorite memories from that time was asking my utility contact how they completed a tap into an active water main without contaminating the water in the existing main and the new pipe. He invited me out to a job site to show me how that was done.

I made a point of doing an inspection and debriefing the facility on my observations. Usually 3/4 of my observations were simple things to correct that were also not urgent items, such as not having appropriate screening on vents of water tanks. I would give them a punch list of things to fix, and schedule a followup for about a month later. In that time, if they fixed the item it did not appear in my inspection report. Internally, for the bean counters, I logged those as defects found and defects corrected, since that were the metrics that were being used. But in formal correspondence, it was as if nothing had happened. But if the facility didn't take care of those simple things, then we would begin dropping the hammer.

I knew of other inspectors, and their supervisors, who took the attitude that their job was to find deficiencies, and if they didn't find deficiencies that meant that they hadn't looked closely enough. So they would spend inordinate amounts of time burrowing deeper into the good actors to be able to find something, while not spending enough time with the facilities that really needed to get straightened out. When someone like that visited any facility, even a "good" one, the whole relationship was adversarial from the start.

 

[#1 Cowboys Fan]

"....My approach going in was that the operator and I were a team, with a shared goal of protecting public health. The good facilities welcomed me because they could learn from me - and I also felt that I could learn from them. "


Well done, and well said. It's too bad more relationships can't be like this (public and the Police, etc.)

 

[pedro47]

Generally true. That was certainly the case when I did sanitary inspections of public water systems. I could tell much about the facility from first encounter.

The only caveat I would put on your statement regards the attitude of the inspector. My approach going in was that the operator and I were a team, with a shared goal of protecting public health. The good facilities welcomed me because they could learn from me - and I also felt that I could learn from them. One of my favorite memories from that time was asking my utility contact how they completed a tap into an active water main without contaminating the water in the existing main and the new pipe. He invited me out to a job site to show me how that was done.

I made a point of doing an inspection and debriefing the facility on my observations. Usually 3/4 of my observations were simple things to correct that were also not urgent items, such as not having appropriate screening on vents of water tanks. I would give them a punch list of things to fix, and schedule a followup for about a month later. In that time, if they fixed the item it did not appear in my inspection report. Internally, for the bean counters, I logged those as defects found and defects corrected, since that were the metrics that were being used. But in formal correspondence, it was as if nothing had happened. But if the facility didn't take care of those simple things, then we would begin dropping the hammer.

I knew of other inspectors, and their supervisors, who took the attitude that their job was to find deficiencies, and if they didn't find deficiencies that meant that they hadn't looked closely enough. So they would spend inordinate amounts of time burrowing deeper into the good actors to be able to find something, while not spending enough time with the facilities that really needed to get straightened out. When someone like that visited any facility, even a "good" one, the whole relationship was adversarial from the start.

I applaud you for your fairness in your inspection .
I was already monitored by some Federal inspectors who were always looking for something.
I never failed an inspection in over fifteen (15) years in management.

 

[jp10558]

I was already monitored by some Federal inspectors who were always looking for something.
I never failed an inspection in over fifteen (15) years in management.

I'm not sure how I feel about that sort of inspectors - on the one hand as a person being monitored I wouldn't like someone nitpicking stuff or just "looking for something to blow up", on the other hand, as a member of the public I'd like inspectors who do check all the audit items and also watch for "this is dangerous / bad even if not specifically on the punch list".

I guess my example with car inspections is I feel like the inspectors looking for the slightest nick in a wiper blade to fail the inspection is a problem, the inspectors who will "lick it and stick it" on anything non-emissions (and that only because they have to use a state computer to pass it" so won't mind a rotten frame or whatever is dangerous. Similarly, I was told by a mechanic who did NY inspections one time that (back then anyway) they were supposed to check very specific things so you'd fail if your seatbelt didn't work as from the factory, but pass if that seatbelt went around a crate on the floor because "the car seat" wasn't part of the checklist. I'd want someone calling that out regardless, even if they maybe couldn't technically "fail" the car.

 

[VacationForever]

I have never heard of the restaurant until this thread. The pictures in the news article do not look appealing to me. The wonton skin looks way too thick to be any good.

BTW, I found a wonderful restaurant which I visited recently, called Win Kee HK BBQ and Noodle. Very very tasty, and it reminds me of food that I grew up with. The issue is that I took my blood sugar after the visit and it was 200! I am pre-diabetic but there is hardly any food that makes my blood sugar spike beyond 140 after a meal. I guess I won't be back.