The city of New York department of mental health and hygiene bureau of food safety and community sanitation restaurant health inspectors and administrators.

SM: Simona Mills, Associate Public Health Sanitarian Level I

MP: Marina Politis, Associate Public Health Sanitarian Level III; Director, Office of Customer Service, Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation

MR: Michelle Robinson, Administrative Public Health Sanitarian; Deputy Executive Director, Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation

AC: Simona, how did you come to be a restaurant inspector?

SM: After graduating from college, I knew that wanted to work in the health department. I like the fact that inspectors are advocates for the public and their food. Basically, I tell people, my grandmother is 100 years old, and I want her to be able to eat in a restaurant, burp and walk away waving, instead of dropping from some food-borne illness. That's my motivation: to protect the public and look out for their best interests.

AC: What kind of training does an inspector go through?

SM: A Public Health Sanitarian has to have a bachelor's degree with 30 credits in the biological and physical sciences, or an associate's degree with 12 credits in the biological sciences, and five years' experience working in the field of environmental health. And once we're hired, we go through a four-month, intensive field and classroom training program through the Department's Health Academy.

AC: When you're out in the field, do you work by yourself or in pairs?

SM: It depends on the program. If I'm doing an initial inspection, I'm on my own. If we're doing an accelerated program, we'll go out in pairs.

AC: What is an accelerated program?

SM: That would be for restaurants that are not quite 'getting it', who are failing inspections consecutively.

MP: They're restaurants that are actually being monitored and have a history of non-compliance. In those instances, you'll go out in pairs.

AC: What goes on in a typical day as a restaurant inspector?

SM: If I'm doing regular inspections, I'll get to five or six sites in a day. It's a gamut--everything from breakfast places and delis to four-star establishments. Every day we're going out and dealing with different people and different personalities. I have learned so much about different types of food. We have to look at everything from a public health perspective--what kinds of ingredients do you use, are they being used properly, are they safe? We want chefs to be able to maintain the integrity of their food, while at the same time meeting the health code. But what we really want to do is get people to understand that we're there to help. We try to teach as well as enforce. We're basically enforcers, but our first priority is as teachers.

What I'm working on now are consultations for the Golden Apple Excellence in Food Safety Initiative. The program was designed to help restaurants increase their food safety. We offer advanced food safety classes for managers, and an award for those establishments that measure up to certain standards set by the department.

MP: We're working with something called 'active managerial control,' where we look at every point where something can go wrong with food safety, from the point of receiving to the point of consumption. That's the whole scope of it. We're certainly HACCP-izing it, and we're also looking at the whole operation of the establishment.

AC: HACCP-ize?

MP: Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points. It's a system to control the food from the time it is being produced--from, let's say, a calf being slaughtered, to the point of consumption, and those points where it can go wrong.

SM: That's the backbone of this whole program: having managers more active in what the entire establishment is doing, from the busboy all the way to the person receiving bills and writing things down. It's kind of fun when we go in for consultations, because it's a different air. We're going in to show them how to incorporate their managerial skills within an actual operation. When they find out they're not getting any violations, they say 'Come on in!' They're more receptive. We help them understand, for instance, why they should keep a cooking log for chicken. Because if they don't cook the chicken to the proper temperature, they're gonna have some issues. So doing this will stop people from complaining about the food and prevent a lot of problems. The log reflects what they're physically doing. My job is to bring the physical work and the managerial aspect together easily and effectively.

MP: The regulatory industry calls it 'active managerial control'--helping and requiring managers to have the best knowledge so they can better manage their establishment. We tell people, 'You don't have to get violations, but there are things that you have to do to manage your staff.'

AC: How long has the Golden Apple program been around?

MR: One year. Right now we have 14 recipients of this award.

SM: It's our way of rewarding those who are doing right and educating those who are not working up to code.

AC: New York is such a culturally diverse city, especially in the restaurant business. When you're out in the field, are you often faced with language barriers or other cultural differences?

SM: Yes. I try and meet restaurateurs and managers at whatever level I can. Sometimes it's not language, it's a difference in educational levels. My training has helped me to get around a language barrier--

MP: All of our inspectors speak [a form of] sign language, and they know 50 ways to say 'clean.' (laughing)

SM: (laughing) That's true. It's been so difficult sometimes that I've had to draw pictures to get my point across.

MP: Although, there is usually someone on site that can translate. If it's a serious situation where the establishment may be getting closed, we have people in our office who [help with translation]. We find a way to get our point across, particularly if we need to throw away food and it's not to be salvaged.

SM: Everybody knows 'not good.' Or 'basura' (Spanish for garbage). Usually a family member or even their children will understand. We'll wait for [the children] to come home from school. It is difficult to enforce rules and violations when they don't understand from the get-go.

AC: What kinds of reactions do you observe when a restaurant's staff sees you coming?

SM: 'Code blue code blue!' (laughing) Well, not really, because we don't come in dressed like inspectors. There's nothing identifying us off the bat, no badge or jacket. If we ask to speak to a manager, the staff will say 'Oh, he's not here,' because they think we're trying to sell something. Then, when we identify ourselves, that's when plans go into action. People move a little faster, and you hear a lot of clanking and cleaning in the kitchen. Once they settle down, we try to tell them that whatever is wrong now is going to remain wrong. It doesn't matter if you start pulling out the mops and cleaning from here to next Tuesday, because it's behavior that we're trying to change. You can clean all you want but you can't change the behavior of someone across the room who's touching food with their bare hands. You can't throw on a glove and then try to work with your grill and burn yourself because you're not used to wearing a glove. When we call to make consultation appointments for the Golden Apple program, we ask managers not to tell their staff that we're coming. We want to see what happens in the cycle of a day, what's the norm. That's the only way we can tackle and change behavior.

AC: Simona, you said that you can tell if a cook has just put on a glove for the first time. Do you see that type of obvious quick-fixing happen a lot in restaurant kitchens?

SM: Yes. All the time.

MP: It's funny that you bring that up, because a lot of people don't seem to understand the bare hand contact rule. We're not telling you to wear gloves for the sake of wearing gloves. We're asking you not to use your bare hands to touch any ready to eat food. If you need to use a utensil, please use one. If you need a napkin or wax paper, use it. It's not a glove rule.

AC: What about hats? I've been in restaurant kitchens where nobody ever wore a hat, and when the inspector showed up, suddenly everyone was wearing these ridiculous, perfectly pristine paper hats out of the package. I remember thinking there's no way the inspector could believe that we always wore them.

SM: (laughing) That's the quickest thing that chefs can correct, but we see everyone without hats before we identify ourselves, so it's kind of a moot point, and again, it's not a hat rule. The issue is touching your hair or head and preparing food.

AC: Anyone with internet access can find out the results of any New York restaurant's most recent health inspection on the Department website. How long has that information been available on your site, and have you seen increased compliance as a result?

MP: That information has been on the site since 1998. I'm not really sure that compliance has increased because of it, but I do know that restaurants have been more compliant since about 1997, because we've made a bigger effort to visit every restaurant in New York in a 12-month period. For the most recent fiscal year, we inspected 99.7% of the city's restaurants.

AC: Has anyone ever tried to bribe you?

MP: Our training teaches us how to deal with every possible scenario. Even though we may not come in with our jackets, once we identify the person in charge and show them our credentials, we let them know that we are there for a specific purpose, and that we cannot accept anything and they cannot offer anything.

SM: Not even a glass of water. Nothing, nothing whatsoever. Although they'll often say, 'Do you want a glass of water?' after we've just said 'not even a glass of water.' I think it's a nervous reaction on their part.

AC: Or, I would imagine, just the hospitality reflex, to offer something to any guest.

MP: It's also a cultural reaction. During Chinese New Year they are supposed to give guests money, that's their tradition. We don't usually [conduct inspections in Chinese restaurants] during the time of their Chinese New Year. It's their culture to offer you something, they're obligated to do it, so we just don't go to the restaurants during that period.

AC: Sounds like there is an element of cultural awareness in your training.

MP: Definitely. As another example, when we visit a Kosher establishment, the inspector knows to ask for a sample rather than going in and putting their thermometer in a whole batch of food.

AC: Have you run into situations where restaurant employees become physically or verbally abusive or threatening?

SM: Nine times out of ten we're respected. I think it's out of fear (laughing).

MR: You ask if inspectors have been verbally abused, hit, slapped? Yes. Even arrested unfairly because a restaurant owner is a friend of the police department. We have really toughened up in that arena. We will revoke permits for people not knowing how to behave themselves and not allowing us to do our jobs. We had two incidents in the last month. It's not as frequent as it used to be but for some reason there's an increase lately. The restaurant industry has a big turnover rate, so sometimes new employees don't know the rules. Not only do they know that you're supposed to hold hot foods above 140 [degrees Fahrenheit], but they also don't know you're not supposed to harass the inspector and keep her from doing her job.

MP: Generally it's people that are new to the business. But those people that have been in business for years, we have fewer problems with them. They know the rules.

MR: Another thing is that we're no longer the 'white men food police' inspectors. We come in all kinds of shapes and colors and ethnic backgrounds. I think sometimes peoples' own ... baggage gets in their way.

AC: What are some of the most common violations that you see in the field?

SM: Improper temperatures. And vermin.

AC: Can you tell us about some of the most egregious or unappetizing things you've seen?

SM: When I first started, I went to inspect a bakery. I saw little things here and there, evidence of vermin. We're taught to identify the evidence as well as identify the vermin, and so I see that and I go down to the basement and start opening up the containers. Whew. I just got goose bumps. So many roaches, so many types of insects that I had never seen before, inside the flour and sugar containers, in with the poppyseeds. I'm so appalled, clutching onto my things so that the insects don't get into them, and I'm saying to the owner, 'Sir, do you see this?' and he's saying, 'What? They just came in!' and flicking them onto the floor. On top of that, I point out the mouse droppings and he says, 'No, these are the seeds that go on the breads!' And at that point I realized that there are some people who just don't get it. I couldn't believe it. That place has since been closed.

MP: I don't even know if it's a question of not getting it, it's just that some business owners don't care and continue to serve food in these conditions. Employees will put their hands in a bag full of mouse droppings and hand you the roll from that bag. They will serve you ice from a machine that has mold inside. Owners will have their employees standing in sewage. They will.

AC: In your free time, can you go out and enjoy yourself in a restaurant?

MR: No.

MP: No.

SM: I have been spoiled forever. I sometimes wish I could take a pill and forget what I've seen. But I can't sit in most restaurants.

MP: We can walk into restaurants and tell by the smell of them if we don't want to stay. We only have two or three restaurants that we go to in this neighborhood [lower Manhattan].

SM: When I go out with my girlfriends they always want to know where we can eat safely.

MP: And now because of the Golden Apple program we know that there are places out there that are great. Places that were doing this before we even came up with the program. There are restaurants out there that are great.

AC: So do you all bring your lunch to work?

MP: For the most part, yes.

SM: Being in this job teaches you certain things. Like pizza. They really can't mess up pizza. They really can't kill me. Now, we're talking about plain pizza, we're not talking about the pizza that's covered with meat or other potentially hazardous food that's sitting there.

MP: What do they do when you order a slice of pizza? They pop it in the oven. Very few people ask for that cold piece of pizza.

SM: I don't eat the crust because that's the part that they touch. I don't sit next to kitchens. They put me far away. My friends know. No basement, no bathroom.

MP: The dinner rolls that they bring out, I don't eat them, because they get recycled.

AC: Is it a fair assumption that fine dining establishments are cleaner than the comer hot dog cart?

SM: It would be really difficult to generalize about any category of restaurant.

The bottom line is, the better managers could be at a chain or a mom and pop place. Some people are better managers than others. It runs the gamut. It really just depends. You can get violations with fast food restaurants. You'd think oh, they're a chain, they're corporate, they have the money to keep these systems in place, but it's all about management.

AC: What is your response to chefs who say that the standards by which the Department judges a kitchen's safety are unrealistic or would cause a kitchen to run inefficiently?

MP: It gets done. It is possible. And in a lot of places these systems are already in place.

MR: It's a business decision. Think about it. What would you rather do: pay your violations, or make your employee do what he's supposed to do? What I don't understand is why you would pay all these employees their wages when they're touching the chicken with their bare hands, or holding it at the wrong temperature? This is your business. When the cleanliness standards are low, everything is low. Why would you pay the Health Department and your workers, instead of just getting the hand washing station that you need? It's part of the business, and it starts with the managers.

SM: Often I'll hear managers yelling at employees, saying, 'How many times have I told you not to do that?' Well, why would you keep that employee if they're consistently putting your business at risk? Is it because you can pay him less than you'd pay someone else? Screaming in front of me does not impress me. Proper management is key.

-Interview by Laurie Woolever

Conducted July 28, 2005

For more information about New York City restaurant health inspections, visit www.nyc.gov/health, or call [phone].