Wednesday, January 9, 2008

How Clean Are The Places We Eat?

We all hear the horror stories about eating out, either upscale in a Ruth’s Chris or fast food chain like McDonalds. I’ve heard everything from bugs crawling to hairs in people’s food and sometimes the wonderful story about animal droppings.

Does it really matter where you eat? What can a restaurant do to prevent these?

I watched a TV show featuring Chef Gordon Ramsey called “Kitchen Nightmares” and it had me thinking. How many restaurants do I go into where I can only trust the management on cleanliness, fresh food and that I won’t get sick? Does the food sit out in the open? Does the meat stay cold enough not to attract any harmful bacteria? Each state has it's own way of inspecting restaurants and people should check out the results before eating out. I’m not sure of what the answer is, tours, dining tables in the kitchen, cooking class or some other way to let the public view behind the traffic doors. A great place to start for owners is the National Restaurant Asscoication.

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