ottawa foodies

is anyone following the ottawa citizen analysis of the food inspection reports? it is using eatsafe.ca website.

here is what they have shown so far and more will be posted in the next few days.

Saturday: One-in-four Ottawa restaurants had ‘critical’ food safety issues.
Sunday: Some of the city’s shawarma restaurants have shaky records on food safety.
Monday: A look at eateries in Chinatown.

my initial concern was the immediate focus on ethnic restaurants rubs me the wrong way. i hope after monday they broaden their scope.

i am not surprised shawarma places have food issues, it mainly seems to be temperature of food and the inaccuract ability to tell when the spit of meat is "cooked" it relies on visual inspection.

One thing they mentioned in the article is something I've seen far too many times -- the handling of food and money without an intermediate washing.

I feel very uncomfortable placing my money into a sanitary-gloved hand!

Gloves in general drive me crazy for exactly this reason - people wear them and then think they have some kind of "sanitary magic" associated with them. So they end up being far less careful. I'd far sooner have someone's hands on my food, because they would be far more likely to keep them clean.

I like to use latex gloves when processing raw protiens
I change them in between just as I do cutting
and I usually wash my hands every 15 mins or so and I also keep a bleach solution in a bucket nearby for use during service

Wow. The whole glove thing reminded me of the times I ate at the former "Mom's Shawarma" in the Centrum. Since it was right next door to my work it was convenient. But when I saw the owner/cook take my money and handle my food, I stopped going. What can they possible think? We won't notice?

it appears that the ottawa citizen reports are only focusing on ethnic food establishments - shawarma places and chinatown eateries. i find this incredibly offensive and myopic. i do not believe that all china town restaurants are problematic, just as i do not believe that all "other" restaurants maintain higher standards. once again the citizen fails in its coverage. instead of offering a full analysis of all neighbourhoods or a selection of neighbourhoods, it chooses to report on a small strip of somerset.

www.ottawacitizen.com

I really hope that this series will move beyond the "ethnic" restauraunts and there will be a story on fast food, steak houses, little italy and the like.

HFF - they're focusing on Chinese restaurants and shawarma joints because they're statistically the worst offenders. this shouldn't be offensive (or a surprise) to anyone, in my opinion. won't stop me from eating at either - like you said it is clear not all of them are bad.

really monty? where are these statistics? your statement, lumping chinese and shawarma joints as known offenders, without providing proof is also offensive.

is it because these type of establishments are typically renters? they don't own the buildings and are occupying lower rent spaces and have to work within poor conditions due to shady landlords? is it because the areas of town they are in have fallen to disrepair with regards to garbage collection, street improvements and city run services due to the city putting funding into other neighbourhoods? i would think that there are a huge range of reasons that certain establishments fail to meet some inspections because of external circumstances and not due to the ethnicity of the restaurant itself.

what about all the sandwich shops, pizza places, and take-out only restaurants that also occupy these types of spaces. why aren' they included?

I can only speak to those restaurants in Chinatown, and the reason why most of them get docked, to be honest, it's mainly because most Asians don't care that much about "cleanliness". It's a totally North American concept. In Asia, and even most Chinatowns, you see raw meat sitting out, seafood sitting out in the summer in "insulated" boxes, etc., but that's because culturally we don't find it wrong or offensive. Take it as you will.

if i'm not mistaken the articles are based on reports from the Ottawa Public Health inspections, which as you know are now public domain and readily available for viewing.

the "proof" is in these reports! it is easy for anyone to deduce which restaurants are labeled critical offenders. the Citizen articles are merely highlighting stats and figures based on their findings from these reports. trends are evident...

re: external reasons - of the deficiencies which Public Health deems critical, most if not all are controllable by the people operating the kitchen. they're primarily related to food storage/handling and general cleanliness. on the whole most businesses including restaurants rent and do not own their properties anyways. i fail to see how street improvements should affect the standard of cleanliness in a kitchen.

hipfunkyfun the articles are focusing on restaurants which are perceived to have the most lax food safety practices. why does this rub you the wrong way?

i don't believe the ottawa citizen went through all of the data in the eatsafe database and come to the conclusion that the asian restaurants on somerset are the worst of the bunch and therefore should be singled out in their report.

also, "Asians don't care that much about "cleanliness"" is offensive.

snooopy loopy:to be honest, it's mainly because most Asians don't care that much about "cleanliness". It's a totally North American concept.

I am asian, I care so much about cleanliness. And, cleanliness is not just North American concept.

I don't find Ottawa Citizen's article offensive, but your comment is very offensive.

also, the citizen posted this, but does go into any special focus for the worst ward.

The Citizen analysis shows that food premises in the ward of Gloucester-Southgate turned in the worst performance, with about 30 per cent found with critical deficiencies at least once last year.

Kitchissippi ward, which includes the Wellington Street and Richmond Road strips, had the lowest rate of critical deficiencies, with just nine of the more than 300 eateries showing serious problems.

To clarify, maybe I shouldn't have said all Asians, but made it more specific to China. This is why most Korean, Thai, Japanese restos are pretty clean, but Chinese ones aren't.

hff i would suggest reading the Public Health inspection reports yourself and doing some due diligence. you can search by ward if that interests you. this is where the Citizen is (presumably) drawing their info from.

www.ottawa.ca

these articles weren't the least bit offensive. my viewpoint may be different - i have worked in a few kitchens including a Viet one. snoopy's comments certainly have a degree of truth to them, but it doesn't stop me (nor should it stop anyone) from eating or shopping for groceries in Chinatown. different cultures, different restaurant practices.

i have read them monty. i have been aware of them since the very first day the city of ottawa made them available online.

if the citizen states that the ward of Gloucester-Southgate turned in the worst performance, why is there no expose on this area? why did they pick china town and shwarama joints? the restaurants mentioned in the 3 days of the article coverage are in the byward market and chinatown. yet these wards are not the worst offenders.

infact after doing presumably the same search as the ottawa citizen did of the database, there are very few asian restaurants listed with critical problems. this is out of 265 (of 713) restaurants, only a handful appear to be on the somerset/china town strip.

(whistling)

Zym - a propos

Keep some for me!

I have to side with monty on this one. I am on the health site all the time and there does seem to be more problems with the restaurants in question than others.

ken v, i must disagree with you saying that the chinese restaurants in the somerset ward are worthy of the ottawa citizen focus. once again i did a search on the exact restaurant ward that the citizen focused on - one that they recognize as not being the worst - and here are a few of the non-chinese critical ones: boko bakery, woodies, mayflower, eggspectations, dunn's, house of georgies, bridgehead, pancho villa, ottawa curling club, holiday inn, oz cafe... the list goes on. but the citizen didn't choose to center out any of these places, only chinese restaurants in that same ward.

I, for one, feel at ease knowing that Barbarella's has safe meat handling practices. Thank you city of Ottawa for checking that out!

hipfunkyfun I was not singleing out just the restaurants on sommerset. There are others as well. It's easy to pick restaurant and check data to fit what you are looking for.
Example:
ottawa.ca

Thanks Chimichimi for the update. I wonder how long the inspectors stayed and inspected all the meat and other foods. I wonder if the Bare Fax will be next. Want to make sure that Friday Lunch Buffet is up to par. Thank you City of Ottawa, our tax dollars - hard at work !!

kenv, i know how the database works. it has also been discussed at length in this forum the merits and concerns with the information present.

my disagreement is the ottawa citizen putting together a "special report" based on this information and presenting it as they have. two of the three articles focused specifically on two ethnic type restaurants. i find that coverage one-sided when the database has just as many non-ethnic restaurants listed for similar/same issues, but these restaurants were not mentioned. if the citizen wants to do a special report on the negative statistics, why not focus on the ward they found had the biggest offenses - Gloucester-Southgate. if their headline is correct "Cockroaches, mice rampant at Chinatown eateries", what is going on in Gloucester-Southgate if it is worse than Chinatown?

hate to beat a dead shawarma here, but i'll repeat - they're "targeting" these 2 types of restaurants because they have the highest % of ticketed critical deficiencies.

for simplicity's sake let's say that 1 in 4 restaurants in the City have a critical infraction (this was mentioned in one of the articles). at shawarma joints and Chinese restaurants on Somerset, the rate is more like 2 in 4 restaurants. not outlandish or unbelievable at all.

they're not trying to hold these guys down. are they trying to cast a negative light? somewhat. it's the media, of course they'll spin/sensationalize. they have to sell a story. but the facts remain.

Sources

www.ottawacitizen.com

"A sample of 52 Ottawa-area shawarma shops inspected since last January shows 22 were found with "critical" deficiencies on their health inspection reports before the problems were fixed. That's nearly twice the rate of critical problems found in other local eateries."

www.ottawacitizen.com

"A Citizen analysis of City of Ottawa reports in the EatSafe database shows that of 42 restaurants and take-outs inspected in Chinatown, 23 had non-critical infractions of food safety rules. Eighteen were found with critical deficiencies, including bug problems."

in summation...

"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

I can add this about shawarma places, the ones I have visited are always dirty inside so I can imagine their food handling practices. I try to only eat their fresh pies.Guess that gives me a false sense of security.

somerset ward has 713 restaurants in it.

search on "Critical" in the somerset ward, you will find that there were 265 restaurants found with Critical infractions. out of 265, chinatown had a lowly 18. but you, ken and the ottawa citizen consider that more significant news than the other 247 places in the ward with Critcal infractions outside of Chinatown?

somerset ward is all of centertown, china town, and little italy. ignore chinatown because we have already targeted their 18 shops. that leaves 247 Critical restaurants spread through centertown and little italy. oh, i'll stop myself. you're right, there is no story there. i don't see anyting possibly interesting with the fact that there are 247 restaurants that had a critical infractions within a 5k range of parliament hill interesting at all, no possible news story there. it is that chinatown that needs to be condemned.

at any rate, i sincerely hope that everyone besides monty and kenv, are brave enough to ignore the citizen propoganda and venture out to chinatown this month. feb 14 is valentines and the chinese new year.

this year the wonderful chinese arch will be built as well.

HFF, I like numbers (a lot). Since you are digging them up. How many restaurants are actually in Chinatown, or more specifically, with 18 having critical infractions, what is the percentage of Chinatown restaurants with infractions?

Is it more or less than the roughly 35% record of the rest of Sommerset ward?

Are you trying to be offensive, or just make a point Monty? Have you tried understanding hipfunkyfun's point? The point she is making, I believe is that if you map the critical infractions on a map, you WILL be able to find 'hot spots' where infraction rates are higher than the surrounding area. This is easiest to do if you drop the sample limit to exactly 1 restaurant, which is not in compliance, but where it's 3 neighbours are in compliance. It's geographical non-compliance is infinitely larger than it's direct neighbours! I expect that if you take a geographical area as small as Chinatown ( maybe 6 linear blocks? ) you will find many similarly sized hot spots in the city that have similar rates of non-compliance. Her point is just that the Citizen can appear to be unfairly targeting Chinatown by not giving comprehensive statistics based upon their own modelling method. Was Chinatown the ONLY place in the city using their sampling methods that has that rate of problems? If that is so, then I apologize, but I sincerely doubt that is the case. I agree with hipfunkyfun that although the numbers may be accurate, they may not be as singular as the article would imply. Your circular argument Monty is essentially that what the Citizen reported, is what they reported...

at this juncture, i admit, i'm having a little fun with this discussion.

i'm not going to defend the Citizen's sampling method, it's a friggin newspaper article not a full blown statistical study stratifying by geographical location.

Pete, you're right. what the Citizen reported, is what they reported. my 'argument' is simply this - there is a degree of truth to it.

i stand by my original statement. the articles aren't offensive (or a surprise) to me. regardless of how the Citizen presents the data, these restaurants have a higher than average instances of violations. why they have higher than average ticketing has been clearly pointed out (refer to snoopy's comments, and HFF's own comments re: shawarma in the 1st post). i don't feel they're being unfairly targeted at all. the Citizen is just spinning the facts to sensationalize a story.

again, just because i can see some truth behind these articles don't make me out to be staunchly anti-Chinatown/anti-shawarma. i worked for many years in a Vietnamese kitchen, and i continue to frequent Chinatown very often to eat at restaurants and shop for groceries. these articles shouldn't prohibit anyone from doing the same.

Something further for discussion re: cultural differences. NB: I haven't read the articles or the database at all.

1) A lot of the cooks in Chinatown restaurants have been brought over from China, usually from smaller villages with little or no formal training with regards to North American standards of food safety and handling.

2) Some things that are totally okay over there are verbotten here. For example, in China squatting is an accepted way of doing things, easier on the legs, back, feet etc. So, often in Chinatown restos you'll see staff prepping sitting on top of milk carts or even squatting while doing food prep. The food will definitely not be the regulated height above the floor. Also, cross contamination isn't considered a no-no like it is here.

I also want to point out that when I said that as Chinese we don't care about cleanliness, I meant two things.

1) In general, we are not that offput by a dirty kitchen. This is changing as the newer generations of Chinese are adopting a more stringent attitude to cleanliness, which accounts for the surge of clean Chinese restos in Toronto etc.

2) By don't care, I actually meant different standards, different cultures etc.

Cheers!

I haven't sorted through the entire database extensively, but it seems that they wrote the article based on 'food type', as opposed to region. What percentage of 'asian food restaurants' versus 'bakeries' were tagged as critical? Are there other groups of offenders that are higher than the Asian restaurants? Not areas of the city, but a type of food...

It's an article in The Citizen no need to over react. I will still be eating Sharwarma and Asian food in Ottawa.