We’re savoring our second cup of organic Sumatra Vienna roast, reveling in our view of the Observatory and mulling over a hike when a segment on KCRW’s Good Food show got our glad-to-be-in-LA stomach churning. This past weekend Jonathan Gold, whose LA Weekly column we embraced as a guide when first landing in town, was babbling on about LA’s restaurant grading. The Dirty Noodle Eater denounced inspections as “culturally biased” (sounds like racist to us) and as not profiling a restaurants food handling, thus having no bearing on the third world offal he makes his name reviewing. He then encouraged listeners to ignore the grades implying they only reflect bureaucratic nit picking on an eatery’s infrastructure. Now our restaurant manager stint on the Upper West informed us on the back-of-the-house horror show that’s par for the course in New York and since 2009 was a banner year for food borne illness across the United States, we find making it trendy to flout health inspections highly irresponsible. We’re thrilled the A, B, C system is one of the best manifestations of tax dollars at work anywhere. So the Legman ran Gold’s podcast by LA County Public Health for their reaction; not surprisingly the agency found the Counter Intelligence scribe to be spreading disinformation.

““It doesn’t matter what part of the planet you came from if your food is safely prepared” said Terrance Powell, Director of LA County Public Health’s Bureau of Specialized Enforcement and Surveillance after hearing Gold’s charge that his inpectors held a cultural bias. “They don’t like to see ducks hanging? Ridiculous. It doesn’t disturb an inspector at all.”

Powell overseas 220 full time inspectors monitoring LA’s 38,000 eateries, making about 74,000 inspections annually. “The first legislation that recognized different methods of preparation was regarding Peking Duck, because prepared in the traditional way it doesn’t harbor bacteria. So Mr. Gold isn’t a good student of the laws that are enforced.”
State law recognizes several non-traditional methods of food preparation to be safe, Powell told us. For example, Korean rice cakes and sushi rice, where vinegar lowers the ph value making it safe to be kept at room temperature.
“When he (Gold) implied our report deals with structural issues and doesn’t address food handling, I adamantly disagree. He’s misinformed” Powell said. “ If you don’t have a sink, that’s related to food handling. Poor temperature control, poor personal hygiene, cross contamination, shear unsanitary conditions, lack of soap and towels on the premises, failed plumbing with over flowing sewage, that relates to food handling.” Since all restaurants start off the bat with 100 points, with one point deducted for minor violations and six for major food handling problems, for an eatery to get a B? “That’s an awful lot of violations” Powell says.
In 24 years of Public Health department service he’s dealt with critics before.
“I understand the critics opinion, they’re into the food tasting good.
We’re into if the food gets you sick. The law doesn’t require that the food taste good. It is required that it doesn’t get you sick.
“I know that in certain environments customers don’t look at grading. I’m not naive. That’s fine too. You don’t have to agree with it.” But Powell likes to say his system and the online reference manual has bred a second group of inspectors, LA’s restaurant goers. “We have the most informed food audiences in the country here in los angeles. And if you think the work we do isn’t important just go to our web site and see.”
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