Unclean cuisine: How does your favorite restaurant rate on health scale?

Restaurant inspection turns up violations

Sonya Enoch, a Chicago Department of Public Health inspector, takes a look in the kitchen of an upscale Polish restaurant on the Northwest Side that was later temporarily closed. (Tribune photo by Jose M. Osorio / September 17, 2008)

"See that hole?" Lopez asked. "Mice and rats love dark places like that to hide."

You get the feeling these two could talk for hours about what rats like.

Behind the butcher counter, Lopez found tidy boards, shiny glass and cold meat. But above the counter she spied fried pork rinds attached to strips of meat.

The flesh checked in at 85.4 degrees, well below the mandated 140, bringing the place one of the most common violations: an unsafe food temperature.

All 20 pounds of the pork had to be "denatured"—doused with bleach and tossed out in front of the inspectors—right away.

In a storage room, Enoch ordered bags of onions stored in a container.

"Mice like sweet and spicy things," she said. "I've seen them eat through bags of flaming hot potato chips."

Despite general compliance, the store ended up with three serious violations, each bearing a $250 fine. The store's owner was given five days to correct them, get reinspected, go to court and sort out the fines. But it remained open.

The next inspection would be in the same Northwest Side neighborhood, a product of a rotation system that keeps inspectors working the same district for a whole year.

So does everyone clamor to get the trendy restaurants downtown or on the North Side?

No way, said Enoch: "There's no parking there."

At the next spot, a nearby Polish restaurant, the inspectors found red velvet curtains, a white baby grand piano and sparkling place settings atop linen tablecloths. Photos of the owner with Polish celebs covered one wall. Among them was a picture of George and Laura Bush with a message calling the eatery "the best Polish restaurant in the U.S."

In the kitchen, Enoch found three grease-caked ovens and warned that they offered a feast for rodents. In the refrigerator, a 4-pound roast checked in at 67.8 degrees—well above the 40-degree limit. "This needs to go in the garbage now."

The kitchen—in stark contrast to the spotless dining room and bathroom—was full of grime, improperly stored foods and dead flies. A trip to the basement revealed clusters of rodent feces that Lopez helpfully described as "black, shiny and beautiful droppings with pointy corners."

Black and shiny, for the uninitiated, means the droppings are fresh. The points mean they come from rodents.

Neither inspector could locate a single rodent poison box, but they did find a mouse.

"There he goes," Enoch yelped.

"Where?" Lopez asked, then caught a glimpse. "Oh, yeah, he's a baby."

Even back in the pristine dining room, the impressive table settings brought a violation because the flatware was exposed.

It all added up to big trouble: Enoch and Lopez were shutting the place down.

As Lopez pulled the restaurant's license from its frame, a large man burst through the front door like he owned the place. Turns out he did. But he was not only the restaurant's owner: Based on a display of trophies and photos in the room, the guy was also a highly accomplished judo champ.

Highly accomplished and, at the moment, highly agitated. He greeted the news of the suspension by darting to the bar and throwing down a whiskey.

It was a tense moment for women who know that health inspectors have been threatened or even assaulted after ordering a closing.

So while the judo champ paced like a panther, the inspectors explained the drill to a female co-owner. The steps required to reopen were many and complex. And the restaurant was racing to prepare for a private party only three nights away.

"This is crazy," the judo man erupted. "I pay $32,000 in taxes. Thirty-two thousand, and you do this to me?"

The inspectors headed toward the exit. But there was one more thing to do.

Enoch pulled out a green sign and smoothed it onto the glass door:

"LICENSE SUSPENDED"

Epilogue: The Polish restaurant made a series of remedies, provided a stack of new documents and passed a follow-up inspection—all in two days. The party would go on as scheduled.

meng@tribune.com