An up-close view of how looks can be deceiving to Ottawa’s 19 restaurant inspectors.
Looks can deceive, inspector says
You imagine that a food inspector could guess the state of a restaurant just from the reaction of the manager. If that’s the case, then a thorough examination of one of Algonquin College’s eateries should be no sweat, as the school’s cafeteria supervisor was so at ease she didn’t even hang around for the inspection.
But looks can be deceiving, according to Ottawa Public Health inspector Jacqueline Chalifoux and supervisor Kathy Downey, who put Portable Feast under the proverbial microscope on Nov. 7.
“The bathroom can be pristine, but the kitchen isn’t,” says Downey. And often a manager may seem relaxed not from a complete sense of confidence that all provincial regulations were followed, but from ignorance of what the rules are.
And so, no matter what the place looks like at first glance, the city’s 19 restaurant inspectors give each of the approximately 400 foodrelated places they show up at unnannouced each week a thorough examination.
At Portable Feast (which looks spotless), Chalifoux starts by washing her hands (naturally) at one of the hand-washing stations, one of which is required at every food-prep and serving section of a restaurant.
“We always check for hot and cold running water,” says Chalifoux. Indeed, lack of hot water is one of the few infractions that can lead to an immediate shutdown of a restaurant.
A wash-up station has to have replenished soap and single-use towels — no reusable cloths allowed for drying hands, as they could spread germs.
The same standards apply for the customer washroom.
Chalifoux then looks for general cleanliness: Are cupboards and shelves well organized? Are personal effects like coats and bags kept in a separate place away from food-prep and serve areas? Do counters appear to be kept regularly sanitized? (Chalifoux looks for spray bottles of sanitizer as evidence of this.) And she checks that one of two allowable systems for sanitizing dishes and cookware is in place: Portable Feast uses a dishwasher-like appliance that heats water to 82 C to sanitize its equipment; the other option is to use a chemical rinse.
Muffin and bagel containers have covers? Check. The refrigerators — and the food inside them — kept at 4 C, as per the regs? Yup.
So far, the Portable Feast is passing its inspection with flying colours.
But now we’re onto the trickier stuff. Or, as public health refers to it, “critical items — factors which lead to food-borne illness.”
Portable Feast is considered a “high-risk” establishment because it handles a large amount of “hazardous foods.” In the public health world, “hazardous” generally refers to raw poultry, fish and beef — items that, if not stored and cooked properly, could lead to illness.
The menu doesn’t seem particularly dangerous, offering up pizza, sandwiches and the like to the student crowd. After all, Portable Feast is hardly serving steak tartare, the subject of an ongoing public health initiative to develop guidelines for the controversial delicacy.
But the college café does prepare frozen chicken fingers and pulled pork that need to be cooked to a certain temperature.
And that temperature is what Chalifoux is looking for. Food that is being kept hot has to be held at 60 C or higher. The inspector pokes a chicken finger with her probe: 63. No problem.
Then she inspects some pulled pork being kept warm in what looks like an industrial-style crock pot. The probe thermometer only registers 55.
Now what? Chalifloux tells the staff to turn up the temperature. But isn’t this an infraction? The inspector, with about five years experience, doesn’t seem too concerned.
“If this had been sitting out here a long time and at a low temperature, I’d tell them to throw it out and write it down as a critical infraction,” says Chalifoux. But as the meat has been kept warm for just 40 minutes, and the temperature is pretty close to regulation levels, the inspector simply asks to up the temperature — she’ll check it again before she leaves the premises.
It’s the degree of on-thespot judgment inspectors use during an examination that was the biggest surprise to emerge from the one-hour process.
“Our main goal is education prior to enforcement,” says Downey, who adds that fines are usually only handed out if a restaurant does not fix an identified problem, or continues to break the rules. “A ticket shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.”
Inspectors draw on their experience and the health record of the establishment. Does the restaurant have a consistent history of infractions, both critical and noncritical? Has anyone ever complained about getting sick from eating there? If a temperature doesn’t meet regulations, is it off by a wide margin or a smidgen?
On the one hand, it’s good to know there are still areas of society where we trust the educated judgment of professionals.
These city officials put the health of patrons first, but they’re cognizant of how shutting down a restaurant risks ruining that place’s reputation forever.
However, some may be alarmed to know that there are relatively few incidents that can lead to an immedi-
‘Our main goal is education prior to enforcement. A ticket shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.’ KATHY DOWNEY Public health supervisor, City of Ottawa
ate restaurant closure. Years ago, Downey inspected a small groceteria where “we could literally hear the rats” scurrying about. That called for a closure, ASAP.
And yet, in August of this year, Kowloon Market was found to have several critical deficiencies, including evidence of “insect/rodent infestation.” As with any critical infraction, public officials revisited the next day to make sure the problem was fixed. It wasn’t. In fact, it took three days for Kowloon to address the problem to the city’s health officials’ satisfaction.
In case you’d rather use your own criteria as to what constitutes a safe place to eat, OPH posts all of its inspection findings online within days of the examination. You can search by ward, category (restaurant, cafeteria, bakery, supermarket, etc.) or restaurant name.
What is more difficult is to ascertain what restaurants were found with critical deficiencies, say, this week.
That problem led Citizen reporter Glen McGregor to develop an app that scrapes public health information for the latest restaurant infractions: follow @RestoWatch on Twitter for a daily update on which restaurants were found with critical issues.
As for Portable Feast, Chalifoux pronounces it to be “in really good shape.” Not 20 minutes after testing the pulled pork, the new temperature reads 60.3 degrees.
And with that, the college café gets its public health gold star, or at least for the next four months until an inspector surprises Portable Feast’s staff again.