Rat Race

Though many cases of foodborne illness would not be prevented by kitchen visits, health inspections are vital.

By Patricia B. Dailey, Editor-in-Chief -- Restaurants & Institutions, 5/15/2007

In June, Disney will release "Ratatouille," a Pixar film about a chronically hungry rat with dreams of being Paris’ greatest chef. Having seen it, smitten children will fall hard for furry rodents—at least animated ones that thrill at the scent of fresh rosemary or a well-aged cheese.

That’s cinema, though, not the real world. Videos of rats running riot in a Taco Bell/KFC in New York City—the detestable critters skittering over floors, standing upright against a highchair and slipping under counters until their skinny tails at last disappear—is the type of coverage from which the foodservice industry recoils as reflexively as the media chomp into it with stomach-churning glee. Television crews descended en masse, cameras panning between the infestation inside and the indigestion outside as would-be customers learned that behind "The Taste You Love" signage was a restaurant to loathe.

Predictably, the story led to a full-out assault by city inspectors who redoubled efforts as they looked to minimize fallout from the coverage of rats gone wild. Armed with checklists, thermometers and eyes trained on any infraction (worn cutting boards, canned food on floors), they turned into warring storm troopers. Citations were plastered all over town, including at Les Halles and Brasserie LCB, where violations were determined to warrant immediate closure.

Reviled though they may be by those under scrutiny, inspections are vital and necessary and they apply equally to fine dining as fast food. If great food and service are aspirations of most every operator, food safety and the gnawing fear that any misstep could be dire should be the gravest concerns. Though many prominent cases of foodborne illness, including last year’s outbreaks tied to spinach and green onions, would not have been prevented by kitchen visits, there is value in having trained inspectors acting in the best interests of public health and safety.

For most of its history, Brasserie LCB was known as Le Côte Basque, a richly pedigreed player in New York City’s dining scene, a 1989 Ivy Award winner that rates 23 in Zagat and attracts a crowd inexorably drawn to a refined, old-guard French menu. It is nearly impossible to imagine that Jean-Jacques Rachou, the 71-year-old chef-owner, doesn’t understand, in every stitch of his culinary DNA, the importance of safe food handling, even if on the day of the inspection things may have been awry in his kitchen.

In late March, Rachou was cleared to reopen, yet as of press time, he has found himself unable to unlock the doors or fire the stoves. He says the smudge left by the code violations so far leaves him too depressed to begin cooking his way back to the respectability built over decades.

In Rachou’s story, a well of human sadness contrasts with the inspectors’ detached numbers based on measures that don’t calculate legacy, history or previous accomplishments. Whether the harshness of his punishment was fully warranted (it is said he did not react so well to the 61⁄2 hour inspection), it nevertheless was carried out as part of a fair-minded mandate designed to protect the public.

The Taco Bell/KFC unit so wildly overrun with rodents will never reopen. It’s hard not to hope that LCB does, though, with Rachou regaining his footing and proceeding with pride restored and kitchen tidy.