How safe is your food? Check out our searchable Food Inspections Guide
We’ve all eaten there: the restaurant with missing sanitation rags, employees who don’t store their grimy cellphones, and food that’s supposed to be served hot or cold but is really just lukewarm.
Trouble is, we often didn’t know it.
These and other breeding grounds for bacteria are health code violations. Restaurants and other food establishments are usually inspected two or three times a year, but finding their scores on your own is not always easy.
The good news is that health inspection scores overall are pretty high in the metro-east.
Since January, there have been 2,465 inspections in St. Clair, Madison and Monroe counties, as well as the East Side Health District. A little over a quarter of these establishments received a perfect 100, and 88 percent scored above 90. Only 17 places got a 75 or below.
Health inspectors look at all sorts of places that serve food and beverages, including restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, school and nursing home cafeterias, as well as other places that serve food, such as funeral homes and churches.
To keep track of the reports, the Belleville News-Democrat is rolling out a new Food Inspection Guide, which will be updated quarterly. The database includes inspection ratings since Jan. 1 in St. Clair, Madison and Monroe counties and the East Side Health District.
The database can be accessed here: bnd.com/foodinspections
Restaurants are inspected without warning, and violations often require the health department to come back and check for improvements, according to Jennifer Meyer of the St. Clair County Health Department.
In those instances, however, health inspectors don’t assign new scores, Meyer said.
“The original score shows the true snapshot of how an establishment (operates) at the time when we arrive for inspection,” she said. Scores are replaced during new spot inspections.
So what would it take to shut down a food establishment right away?
Well, that depends on the severity of the violation, said Myla Oliver-Blandford of the East Side Health District. Severe issues include a lack of hot or cold running water, a sewage backup or an insect infestation.
The lowest score in the metro-east was a 59 for The West Main Cafe, 1601 W. Main St., Belleville. Health inspectors returned shortly after to help the business address its issues. They included refrigerators that did not stay below 41 degrees, and labeling and dating food.
In a statement, the owners wrote that they “lost a lot of points for small things we did not think were health hazards, like broken floor tiles, keeping the dumpster lid closed and towels outside of the cleaning bucket.”
The original score shows the true snapshot of how an establishment (operates) at the time when we arrive for inspection.
Jennifer Meyer of the St. Clair County Health Department
In Madison County, inspectors look for both critical and noncritical violations, according to Toni Corona, the public health administrator. Each category is weighted, with critical violations set at four and five points, and smaller violations valued at one and two points.
Health inspectors do more than just walk through a kitchen and look around, Corona explained. It’s one thing to test a pot of soup and make sure it’s hot enough at the time, but it’s an entirely different thing to talk over food preparation with cooks to make sure they’re making the soup the right way every time.
Corona said she can’t imagine a food establishment that wouldn’t want to comply with the rules. Everyone’s on the same team.
It’s all about “providing a wholesome product that’s free from spoilage that will continue to bring customers back,” she said.
Casey Bischel: 618-239-2655, @CaseyBischel
How to use the BND’s Food Inspection Guide
You don’t need to know everything about a restaurant or other place that serves food to know what score it received. In most cases, simply inputting the business into the name field will do.
In other cases you might need to add a little more information.
For example, there are four Aldi’s supermarkets in the area. If you enter the town it’s in, you’ll get one record, if you leave it blank, you’ll get all four. Type in a town where an Aldi’s doesn’t exist, however, and you won’t get a record.
For difficult words — “Schnucks” comes to mind — try entering only a handful of letters. There are a lot of those stores, though, so fill out the town, too. A misspelling will get you nothing.
If there is more than one restaurant with the same name, simply typing in the name should bring all of them up, unless one of them has not been inspected yet this year.
Lastly, if you’d like to see which restaurants got the best and worst scores, try entering both a minimum and maximum score. (However, due to a quirk in the software, entering ‘0’, ‘1’ or ‘10’ retrieves all the ‘100’ scores, too.)
This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 7:00 AM with the headline "How safe is your food? Check out our searchable Food Inspections Guide."