See restaurant health code violations in St. Clair County in this searchable database
Is your favorite restaurant following all the government regulations that are designed to help keep the food it serves safe for you to enjoy?
Health inspection reports can offer you a rare glimpse inside the kitchen. And the Belleville News-Democrat has built a searchable database you can use to find out what health inspectors reported they saw in restaurants across St. Clair County.
The county has more than 1,000 restaurants, which receive unannounced, routine inspections two to three times a year. Health inspectors could also visit a restaurant to investigate a complaint or to follow up on issues they identified in a routine inspection.
The BND plans to update its Metro-east Restaurant Inspection Database regularly to bring readers the latest inspection results.
If details from an inspection report published in the database need clarification, restaurant owners and managers can contact reporter Jennifer Green at 618-239-2643 or jgreen@bnd.com.
Before you start searching, here are some caveats to keep in mind and some tips for using the database:
What to know about restaurant inspections
Restaurant inspection results are a snapshot based on what health inspectors saw the day they visited.
Health inspectors are checking for compliance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Code, a 644-page document outlining ways to reduce the risk of food poisoning and other best practices for the food service industry.
Violations are common, according to Sharon Valentine, who oversees inspections for the St. Clair County Health Department as director of environmental programs. But some are considered more serious than others. Regulators rank them like this:
- Priority: These are the most serious violations because they directly affect the safety of the food at critical steps like cooking, reheating or cooling and hand-washing, all of which can make people sick if done incorrectly.
- Priority foundation: These violations involve issues with training, procedures, infrastructure or equipment that are needed for employees to cook, reheat or cool food and to wash their hands.
- Core: These violations are less directly tied to the safety of the food. They can involve general cleanliness, maintenance and other issues.
Valentine says priority violations are the ones diners should be most concerned about, particularly food temperature. Health inspectors check the temperature of both hot and cold food in restaurants to see if it’s in the range that harmful bacteria grow best in: 41-135 degrees.
Sometimes, violations are fixed during the inspection. Food in that temperature range, for example, could be thrown away, reheated or chilled on ice. Health inspectors make note of on-site corrections in their reports.
In 2019, Illinois stopped using scores to rate restaurants’ overall compliance with government regulations after an inspection.
The Illinois Department of Public Health and the FDA have noted one drawback of a rating system is that it’s possible for a restaurant or other food establishment to get a high score while “exhibiting some very serious deficiencies.”
What to know about BND’s Metro-east Restaurant Inspection Database
Here is some helpful information about the database, including tips for finding what you’re looking for:
- Each horizontal row in the database represents one inspection. Some restaurants were inspected more than once.
- If you type a restaurant’s name or a city name into the database’s search bar, it will filter the database so you only see inspection results from that restaurant or that town.
- If you locate a concerning violation, you can search for the restaurant’s name to check for follow-up inspections that might have found whether or not the violation was later corrected.
- You can also filter the database by searching other terms that might appear in the reports. For example, typing “insects” or “rodents” into the search bar will show you where inspectors noted they saw pests. If you want to see where food temperature violations have been observed, you can type “proper cold holding temperatures,” “proper hot holding temperatures” or “proper reheating procedures for hot holding” into the search bar.
The information in the “violations” column of the database is verbatim from St. Clair County health inspectors’ comments in their reports, with two exceptions:
We omitted references to specific sections of the FDA Food Code — such as “3-501.17” — and instead gave you the name of the section — like “Ready-to-Eat, Time/Temperature Control for Safety Food, Date Marking.”
We also spelled out abbreviations the inspectors frequently used, like “COS,” which means corrected on site.
Here are definitions for food industry jargon contained in the reports:
- Category I, II and III establishments: Places that serve food are categorized based on the level of risk of food poisoning. Their category determines how often they’re inspected. The riskiest settings are Category I establishments, which cook meals from raw ingredients; they are inspected three times a year. Category II establishments reheat commercially frozen food and other food that was prepared in advance. Category III establishments serve only pre-packaged food they don’t have to cook or reheat. In St. Clair County, Category II and III establishments are inspected twice a year.
- Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point: A system for preparing food safely that covers steps like the temperatures for cooking or reheating specific foods to prevent food poisoning.
- Time/Temperature Control for Safety Food: Foods that should be cooked, reheated or cooled to specific temperatures to prevent bacteria from growing.
How to report a possible health code violation
Health departments investigate reports from the public about suspected food poisoning and concerns about the sanitary conditions of restaurants.
You can file a complaint with the St. Clair County Health Department by calling 618-233-7769 or emailing SCCHDenvironment@co.st-clair.il.us.
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
