Food for Thought Report 7.29 - KCBD NewsChannel 11 Lubbock

The principles of food safety are the same no matter what county you're in, but there are a couple differences in Scurry County. For one: the responsibility of inspecting all the county's restaurants falls squarely on the shoulders of one woman, Cindy Nix. She says, "Because we're small and we know the people, I think we're in the restaurants more frequently than they are seen in some of the bigger towns."

Food for Thought 7.29 Here is a complete list of the restaurants and their violations for the week ending on 7/29/04.

It's up to Cindy to inspect Scurry County's forty restaurants at least three times a year. She says, "I always take temps to make sure hot foods are held at 140 degrees or hotter our cold foods are at 41 degrees or colder." Cindy accompanied NewsChannel 11 into Neighbors Bar-B-Que in Snyder for this special community coverage edition of Food for Thought. We soon learned she's a stickler for organization. Everything must be neat, clean and labeled. Cindy explains, "In this area (the walk-in cooler) we have them keep raw meats separate and apart. Cooked products go up above. They usually put date prepared and date they have to throw it away."

Under Cindy's watch, everything stays in order, from cleaning materials to the restaurant's bar-b-que pit that holds 96 sides of ribs at one time. Doyce Nix (no relation to Cindy Nix) runs a tight ship at Neighbors while feeding a hungry, working, lunch-time crowd. His philosophy makes Cindy's job just a little bit easier. Doyce says, "I think you have to have three things: good location, good food and good service, but it also has to be clean."

And if there's any doubt, Scurry County requires each restaurant to post their latest inspection report in plain sight for everyone to see. Cindy says, "If you walk in and don't see it, ask."

NewsChannel 11's Community Coverage Tour may have brought us to Snyder for Food for Thought this week but we didn't forget about Lubbock County's health inspections. They were split down the middle with two top and two low performers.

Let's start with our restaurants who got perfect scores. First: Chuy's Tex-Mex Restaurant at 701 50th Street. Congrats to Chuy's for having zero critical violations.

Congratulations are also due to Vickie's Kitchen, a mobile unit based at 618 80th Street. Vickie's also had zero critical violations, making them another top performing restaurant.

Switching to the low performers. Durango's at 1602 Main Street had four critical violations when inspectors surprised them with a visit.

• Ground beef was found held below the required 140 degrees
• Durango's was using a steam table to reheat items which is forbidden
• A sink had a hose connected to it with no back-flow prevention.
• The cook did not have a thermometer available to monitor food temps.

Three of Durango's critical violations were corrected on site. The restaurant's manager tells NewsChannel 11 the fourth has since been corrected as well. She also said Durango's takes their health inspections very seriously.

Finally, our second low performer is La Malinche at 1105 2nd Place. Malinche's had five critical violations.

• A kitchen employee handling foods with her bare hands and touching other items in between handling food.
• Potentially hazardous foods were not date-marked.
• Two reach-in coolers were found above the required temperature.
• A hand sink was out of order.
• The tortilla machine needed cleaning.

Three of the violations were corrected on site and Malinche's manager tells us everything else has also been corrected.