Go inside Houston restaurant kitchens to see what health inspectors find

(9/13/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- No one could ever replace our late Marvin Zindler, but we're keeping much of his important work living on. Marvin's original Friday rat and roach report highlighted health problems at area restaurants, and we will continue to bring you this valuable information, with a bit of a different look

Keeping a kitchen clean is not an easy task, but when you run a restaurant, it's the law. The city of Houston makes sure where you eat is up to code. Health inspectors say nothing keeps restaurants on their toes quite like our rat and roach report.

Health inspector Gene Bowden took a thorough look at the kitchen of Amazon Grill at 5114 Kirby during his most recent visit. In the walk-in cooler, Bowden sees a common problem -- the cooler is not cold enough.

Remember, if meat reaches room temperature and stays there for two hours, bacteria could start to grow and could leave you sick. That's something to keep in mind for your own kitchen.

At Amazon Grill nearly 300 pounds of meat had to be thrown away. The owners got a repair man out and fixed the problem on the spot.

"We have our maintenance guy here and we are going to attach our cooler to the alarm system to receive immediate notification when something does drop below temperature," promised Bobby Wells with the Amazon Grill.

Across town, inspector Marcia Washington is doing a follow up at the Shoney's at 2360 South Loop. Store managers called the staff and said they did not want our cameras in the kitchen. So we waited outside for the results.

Washington reported, "They had grease build-up under the grills and fryers in the cook lines and they did not have paper towels in all of the hand sinks."

Nothing major, and even though managers took corrective action, they still did not want to talk to us.

Up next was Tel Wink Grill at 4318 Telephone Road. The manager didn't mind at all if we tagged along in the kitchen. Inspector Washington found the cleaning solution was not quite strong enough in the dish washer. But the owner fixed the problem right away. It was the only issue in an otherwise clean kitchen.

"It was clean, the temperatures were good," Washington said. "They had good practices, everything was perfect."

Even in your own kitchen, hot water is not enough when it comes to cleaning dishes. Sanitizing solution is needed to get the job done.

The city health department inspects dozens of restaurants each week and we are showing you just a fraction of those they visit. But if you'd like to see those reports, you can look them up in the city of Houston's online database.
(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)

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