Food for Thought Report 6.17 - KCBD NewsChannel 11 Lubbock

6/17/04

Food for Thought Report 6.17

One popular Mexican fare restaurant and one popular pizza joint are this weeks food for thought low performers, but the good news is: we have six local restaurants with perfect inspection scores.

Three Lubbock International Airport restaurants are top guns this week. Travelers can rest assured their getting a clean meal or sweet dessert from the LIA Pizza Hut, the LIA Restaurant, and the LIA TCBY. All three had perfect scores. They're accompanied by three other area restaurants.

Food for Thought 6.17
Here is a complete list of the restaurants and their violations for the week ending on 6/17/04.

The Taco Bell/Pizza Hut on 5111 82nd street is our fourth top performer.

Top performers five and six come out of the United Supermarket at 2603 parkway drive. The bakery that cooks all those delicious breads and other goodies had zero violations, and not far away, the United Meat counter shares the spotlight.  They also had zero violations.

Now for the low performers. We start with Mamarita's Border Cafe at 6602 Slide Road. Mamarita's had four critical violations.

  • Cooked rice was found cooling improperly in a walk in cooler.
  • Food held on a cold service line was found above the required 45 degrees.
  • A reach in cooler was not working properly.
  • A can opener, mixer and blender were soiled.

Mamarita's owner tells us all violations have been corrected.

Our second low performer specializes in pizza. So let's show you how Pinocchio’s at 4210 82nd faired, slice by slice.

  • Cold sausage and cheese were found held above the required temperature of 45 degrees.
  • Personal drinks were found in the prep area.
  • Employees did not use gloves or hand sanitizer for food preparation.
  • Food items were found not properly date marked.
  • The hand washing sink was blocked
  • The employee bathroom was out of soap
  • The hand washing station was out of paper-towels
  • A knife being used to slice pizza was missing a piece of metal.

Other violations included flies in the kitchen area, soiled floors and surfaces and dead insects in the waiting area.  All critical violations were corrected on sight.

Now, as we promised straight from the inspectors themselves, we've got some horror stories:

“I walked into one of the establishments to do an inspection and they had sewage backed up all over the kitchen floor. Their hot water had gone out. I don't know how many days and none of their walk-in coolers were working, so I asked them to shut down,” said Bridget Faulkenberry, Environmental Health Manager.

“I've seen really dirty restaurants like I was saying before, about the mold in the soda machine nozzles, I put my finger into the little cup where they store it and my whole finger has come out with chunks of mold, said Health Inspector Jennifer Sedia.

“We looked into this little cubby hole where they store their plates and there was a nest of roaches feeding off each other and of course we both screamed like little girls!,” recounted Health Inspector Jodie Heilman.

If those grossed you out, that was just a taste. We’ll have more that we'll show you at a later date.