You may assume the cockroach is a perfect sphere.

D=Y. To reopen they had to be reinspected, so the time they will be cleanest is as close as possible to the passing inspection.

D=Y, because really, what's the big deal?

D=Y+1.
SP is right, but is omitting how much anybody hates getting inspected. Let them go home, get a nice night's sleep, then go back the next day when everybody's in a better mood.

Date Y. They won't re-open until the Health Department approves it. On the other hand, I fear no food.

Since everyone seems to agree, the more interesting question is what date S should you stop going there again? Is there a specific event or can you assume that after a week of being reopened they're not washing their hands any more?

Also with the date Y. The thing about failing a Health Department inspection is that, if the Heath Department's standards are in the right place, then a failure doesn't necessarily mean the food was dangerous - there should be room between doesn't meet standards and will give you food poisoning.

This makes me feel like less of a freak. I'm more of a "Date Y" kind of person but I know a lot of people who are like "OMG - I'm never going there again!"

7 is correct. Health department inspections aren't about looking for dangerous bacteria, they're about looking for indicators that if unchecked will lead to dangerous bacteria in the food. Like evidence that rodents have been running around, or storing raw things above cooked things.

You might be surprised how few home kitchens would pass a Health Department inspection. Be honest: how often do you clean under your refrigerator and wipe down all your counters with bleach?

the more interesting question is what date S should you stop going there again?

Depends if you ever had bad results from going there before it was closed down. If not, it was probably a one off, keep on snacking; if so, run away now.

I know a lot of people who are like "OMG - I'm never going there again!"

Those people are unserious. Either they've never worked in a restaurant, or they should take their standards literally and never eat anywhere.

You need 28 points to fail an inspection. Scarier, I think, are all of the restaurants in my neighborhood hovering around the 24-27 mark.

Also, do you use three sinks for washing dishes, including a sterilizer? You DON'T? I bet you even store raw meat above precooked or pasteurized products, you sick bastard.

Apo, I think you're overestimating the standards a bit. I worked in a restaurant that, I can assure you, never cleaned under their refridgerators or wiped down their counters with bleach.

I'm sure my kitchen would still fail, so point taken.

7: Right. The thing to do is read the details on the report if it's available. Here's what L.A. provides:

http://www.lapublichealth.org/rating/

13: Eh, the more bugs you encounter, the more antibodies you get. That which does not kill me cures my hunger, or something like that.

My examples in 9 are not good ones. What I should have cited were health department violations that in no way imply the actual existence of food poisoning, just the risk that it may develop. Like refrigerators without temperature indicators, or storing things on the floor.

15: Yeah, now that I think about it, those were tasks we did when I worked in a wholesale ravioli factory. I also worked in the filthiest restaurant in Chapel Hill (never had better than a B while I was there) and lord knows we didn't do those things either.

My home kitchen wouldn't pass. For one, I'm pretty sure there's a rule about cooking with a cat perched on top of the fridge.

I know health department rules are supposed to catch kitchens before they become dangerous harbors of disease, but is that they way they really work?

It seems to me I've gotten sick from eating a lot of places before they were shut down by the health department.

In Portland someone found a sous-chef chopping food in the bathroom.

The times I've gotten sick from restaurant food it was mostly because it was incubated too long, I think. Going in off-hours can be dangerous.

I don't think I've ever gotten sick from restaurant food. In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever gotten sick from food I've bought (rather than made), ever.

[I have gotten ill from beer, though. And I don't mean from drinking too much, I mean from beer that's improperly stored or where the pipes etc aren't clean ... ]

The real question here is - what's the date restaurant? Always good to have a couple on hand...

My kitchen would fail an inspection which is part of the reason why I mostly order in. That, and I'm too lazy to cook. I'm more confident in the food-safety measures of Ye Olde Dirty Chinese Restaurant than I am in my own, though now that I don't have animals or roommates (same thing really) I vow to start cooking and being a decent, hygenic person.

4's wrong. If you go in on date Y, they'll be incredibly grateful to you for showing up and you'll get fabulous service.

15, 19: I donno, I think the standards are pretty strict. Here in DC I know that there's been some controversy over a Maryland suburb deciding to require soup kitchens to abide by health code standards. The three-sink dishwashing method was specifically brought up, since a lot of churches aren't equipped for that sort of thing.

In the VA suburbs, my roommate's mom also had to get certified by the health department for purposes of running the church kitchen. In that case it was over fundraising dinners that they throw, so the requirement was a little more understandable. But the actual standards she had to learn were pretty complicated and stringent -- different designated buckets for different things, how often you have to wipe things down, all that stuff.

The entire country needs to get on board with L.A.'s system of posting of the grades in the front window.

27- this may turn in part on whether one lives in one of those liberal, overly-regulatory blue states, or one of the more "economically efficient", business-friendly red states. I worked in a proudly red-state kitchen, unburdened by those thickets of red tape that strangle small businesses. We had mice.

20:

We always shoo the cat off the counter, if he starts trying to eat our food. That meets the health department standards, right?

I worked in a proudly red-state kitchen, unburdened by those thickets of red tape that strangle small businesses. We had mice.

See, in a blue state you could have strangled them with the red tape.

28: For the most part I agree with you, but L.A.'s system has had the odious result of creating a new breed of people who loudly convey horror and disbelief that anyone would frequent an establishment with a "B" in the window. And those people need to be shot.

And those people need to be shot.

Isn't living in L.A. punishment enough?

Point taken. You'll note I no longer live there.

Hey!

You might be surprised how few home kitchens would pass a Health Department inspection.

More to the point, how many home kitchens make food as unpalatable as most take-out?

Mind you, I realize we're talking about take-out you actually like. But really, I dislike most of it because it's overcooked. Feck, man, between overcooked veggies, soggy pasta, sodium, and the propensity to consider that sauce=goo, eh, not much inclined.

My home kitchen may have years of chopped garlic ground into the cutting board, but I don't overcook my broccoli.

As I've tried to explain to you before, B, you don't live in LA either.

I think I'm more interesting in finding a restaurant that fails the Mental Hygeine inspection.

More to the point, how many home kitchens make food as unpalatable as most take-out?

Any kitchen I walk into is capable of doing this.

The entire country needs to get on board with L.A.'s system of posting of the grades in the front window.

I thought that was common practice everywhere. It is in South Carolina. Of course, the State Health Dept. can't afford to perform routine inspections (only to respond to complaints and actual outbreaks), but that big *A* in the front window of your favorite joint helps preserve the polite fiction necessary to pleasurable dining.

33: Not when I can get a good pastrami sandwich at 3am while getting shot.

Any kitchen I walk into is capable of doing this.

You got the kitchen voodoo?

37: No, but I *like* LA and would like to live there.

The Offspring works in the kitchen of a five-star hotel in Beverly Hills. The Health Inspector gave them a C, whilst admitting that if they weren't a five-star hotel catering to the rich and famous, she would have shut them down. So much for the meaningfulness of Health Department inspections.

Hell, look upon the bugs and mice as food-tasters; we may not be able to afford/avoid legal problems by having human ones, but those little critters are doing us a favour. If Litvenenko's tea had been sampled by a friendly rat, he might have been forewarned in time to get some really good partying in before the P-210 got him.

Ever read Down and Out in Paris And London, with Orwell talking about the nastiness of expensive kitchens?

Anthony Bourdain's advice for NYC is to check the bathrooms. If the bathrooms are filthy, don't eat there.

This doesn't work in the South, because apparantly we're not big believers in cleaning bathrooms.

What if there don't seem to be any bathrooms?

Then definitely don't order the cream of mushroom soup.

I'm very surprised that none of you share my instinctive reaction which is that there is some Food quality F, below which my answer is: "never", and above which my answer is: "Date Y".

This assumes that I know nothing about the probable causes of failure, only that it happened.

If I can read the report, I will judge for myself whether what they were doing is somewhat harrowing vs. merely slightly imprudent (i.e. no worse than my own kitchen). F will then vary by how bad the violations were. the more horrific the violation, the higher F will need to be. If the violation is not particularly bad, then F will only need to be whatever was required for me to go back in the first place.

Given how easy it to fail a health inspection in most places, and that I'm willing to eat falafel and shawerma from NYC street vendors, I'd have to be pretty close to indifferent to eating there for a random failure about which I know nothing to keep me from going back.

But very definitely, if it keeps me from going back on Date Y, it would keep me from going back at all.

I go as soon as it re-opened. It has a clean bill of health. But I feel like I'm getting cooties. Sort of like when Chris Mathews things about Hillary Clinton. And so then I never go back there again.

I knew that L.A. gave grades, but I didn't know that anyone else did. Most places I've lived in the options seem to be "pass" and "fail."