The dirty truth about your favorite restaurant
I give you fair warning here, I am probably about to upset you a little bit.
Restaurants are a dirty, disgusting, filthy, mess. Last year, one out of three Americans became ill after eating out, and the real number is much higher than that — many of you just didn’t connect that virus you got with the barista who coughed in your latte.
Restaurants have always been dirty, but things have definitely gotten worse. As the economy collapsed, restaurateurs were looking for more ways to save a dollar — often by cutting the parts of the business that the customers don’t see: cleaning staff, dishwashers, prep cooks, etc. Now there is a smaller staff that still needs to get the same things done, which leads to cutting corners. Vegetables aren’t washed, hands aren’t washed, work spaces aren’t sanitized, and on and on.
You should know that I do eat out pretty often. I love food and it’s worth the risk sometimes. But it IS a risk! Here are some tips to keep you healthy while dining out:
* Do your very best to avoid ice, limes, and lemons in your drink.
The majority of restaurant workers do not wash their hands enough. They take the subway to work (for example), touch all sorts of icky things on the way (money, handrails, newspaper, money, other people, you name it!), then get behind the bar and make you a drink. Last year, the NY and NJ restaurant associations determined that 65% of lemons and limes at restaurant bars were contaminated with fecal matter!
Ice is often the dirtiest thing in a restaurant. Several years ago, research done by the Dept. of Health demonstrated that very often restaurant ice is dirtier than the same restaurant’s toilet water. But this is not the only danger. No matter how many times they are told not to, most bartenders still scoop ice with the glass they are filling (as opposed to using an ice scoop), which results in tiny chips in the glass and therefore pieces of glass finding their way into the ice. On more than one occasion, in more than one restaurant, I have been called over to do damage control for a customer who found a large chunk of glass in their drink.
* Don’t eat the bar food no matter how hungry you are!
Remember that bartender who started his shift without washing his hands? Well now you are sharing peanuts with all the customers who also skipped the hand wash — and I mean MONTHS of dirty-handed customers because every night those leftover bar treats go back into a huge jar behind the bar which could take a year to finish. Are you hungry yet?
* If it really has to be decaffeinated, drink it at home.
About half of the time when your server tells you that your coffee or tea is decaf, it’s not.
* Skip the salad.
Washing salad greens is an art. No matter how good the salad should have been, if your greens are gritty or grainy, it will be horrible. And yet, for some reason, restaurants universally use the lowest man on the totem pole to wash the greens.
Salad greens come into the restaurant in a cardboard or wooden box. They are then thrown into a big sink in the kitchen and soaked to remove the large chunks of dirt, worms, sand, etc…This sink could have previously been used for anything. I have seen the following uses for a salad sink: a place for kitchen staff to brush their teeth, a place to fill a bleach bucket to clean kitchen counter tops, a place for staff to clean their dirty aprons, a place to defrost meat or seafood, a place to wash a bleeding wound, I think you get the idea. So yes, the dirt does come out of the greens, but they are now filled with bleach, soap, blood, bodily fluids, and all sorts of bacteria. Order the soup.
* Go to the bathroom before you eat. If the bathroom is dirty, run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. I promise you, the kitchen is ALWAYS dirtier than the bathroom.
There is really nothing more to say about this one.
* Don’t go out to eat on a Sunday or Monday night. If you do, don’t order the fish. At the very least, don’t order the fish special.
Sundays and Mondays are a restaurant’s slow nights. With very few exceptions, food deliveries come on Friday at the latest and then not again until Monday or Tuesday so that food doesn’t go bad during the slow part of the week. Meat, poultry, and fish should be consumed 1-2 days after purchasing. Especially fish. By Monday night, fish is a risky choice — and the fish special is almost always a way to clean out the fridge and make room for next week’s delivery.
The below VERY popular New York City restaurants did not do so well on the cleanliness or rodent-control portion of their last health inspection (please keep in mind that these restaurants do have the right to dispute their latest inspection reports). Eater Beware!
BLT Burger — Ave. of the Americas, Manhattan
Blue Ribbon Sushi — Sullivan St., Manhattan
Chance Restaurant — Smith St., Brooklyn
Brawta Cafe — Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Brother Jimmy’s BBQ — Third Ave., Manhattan
Wolfgang’s Steakhouse — Greenwich St., Manhattan
The Nascent Cafe — Bergen St., Brooklyn
Nathan’s Famous — Brooklyn Boardwalk
Marmara Seafood and Grill — Queens Blvd., Queens
Four Seasons Hotel — 57th St., Manhattan
Five Guys Burger and Fries — LaGuardia Place, Manhattan
Gramercy Tavern — East 20th St., Manhattan
Tribeca Grill — Greenwich St., Manhattan
Nobu — Hudson St., Manhattan
Oyster Bar — 7th Avenue, Manhattan
5 Points Restaurant — Great Jones Street, Manhattan
Melt — Bergen Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Ozzie’s Coffee — 7th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn
City Crab — Park Avenue So., Manhattan
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Excellent article, Jessica. Made me a little nauseated, but most of it I knew as my sons have been bartenders and always told me not to eat “bar fruit.” I am fanatical about people washing their hands, but you’re right, who cares in most restaurants how carefully your greens are washed, if at all. This will help alot of people, including me, to save money by eating at home and only eating out when it is really worth it and if possible, in places you really trust. I have a severe seafood allergy, so I already have to do that. That bit about the things going on in the sink – yuch. Good job! And, you are a good writer.
Miss you.
Back in college, I worked as a busboy at a restaurant in DeKalb, Illinois. One of the waiters broke a drinking glass right next to the large crushed-ice receptacle, and hundreds of bits of shattered glass ended up in the ice. So I started scooping the ice out of the receptacle (which was built into a counter) and putting it into a bucket so it could be thrown out. The manager actually chastised me, saying, “you’re supposed to put ice into that thing, not take it out.” When I explained that it was filled with chipped glass, he actually had to think about it for a moment before allowing me to continue.