Why Restaurants Are Sometimes Insanitary

1916

By Woods Hutchinson
The World's Best Known Writer on Medical Subjects

There is little actual reason for the public to become wildly alarmed over this 99½% per cent badness in the official scoring of restaurants and lunch counters, because conditions in public eating places have probably always been just as bad as they are now since the time when memory of man runneth not back to the contrary — and we still survive in a moderate state of preservation. The only reason why we didn't know of them was that no private individual had the stomach, and no public official took the trouble to penetrate those steamy and smelly regions of mystery behind the battered and sweat-marked swinging door at the back of the eating room. The occasional whiffs which escaped from there when the wind was in the right quarter were quite enough.

In the language of the hymn, there are some things which "'tis better not to know." But now that their nauseating secrets have been discovered and dragged out into the pitiless light of day and published broadcast, there is only one thing to be done, and that is, wipe them out of existence, as the restaurateurs have crestfallenly recognized and are proceeding to do with the best grace they may. Of twenty-two reinspected over half were found to have made marked improvement.

Not Finicky Verdict

Nor can it fairly be claimed that this extraordinary low rating of a great group of successful restaurants is due to finicky and unattainable standards of healthfulness. This was the not unnatural conclusion suggested in a good many of the first comments upon the findings. There is nothing superfine or fantastic about the shortcomings reported, nothing that requires a microscope to see or a chemical reaction to detect. Just an ordinary eye and an unspoiled nose and an average sense of decency and cleanliness are all that is required.

No scrapings were made from walls or refrigerators, or the cuffs and lapels of waiters' jackets, no bacteriologic counts made of the platings, no analyses for tenths of a per cent of some adulterant, or for the use of wood vinegar in place of cider vinegar in the dressings. Every fault found was perfectly visible to the naked eye. Food was found standing or stored on the floor. Cooks were found preparing dishes with unwashed hands and in filthy, ragged clothing.

Scraps and leavings from the plates were resurrected in the next day's soups and stews and minces. "Spot" eggs and low grade, that is, rancid, butter, were used in the pastry and puddings which could not be sold upon the delicatessen counters in open daylight was sent back to the restaurant and concocted into goulashes and ragouts and hamburger steaks. The phrase "in the soup" has acquired a new and sinister significance. Dishes and plates were only half cleaned in greasy, reeking dishwater, or wiped upon slimy, filthy dish towels. Dish washers, scullery men, and even cooks and waiters were found with skin diseases of the hands and face, catarrh, tuberculosis, even typhoid, and other disgusting or communicable disorders.

Dark Kitchens Menace

In fact, as Inspector Brown quietly remarks, "The requirements for scoring the grade 'good' are only such as any citizen would wish and expect for the handling of his own food." They are nothing more than would be expected as a matter of course, in any decent private kitchens. Not that all home kitchens do come up to these standards, but a good many of them do.

One of the reasons why public kitchens have got into this slipshod, unhygienic custom of the trade way of doing things is partly because they are Over-crowded and badly lighted, and either on account of high rents, or of the desirability of using as much as possible of the front and well lighted, attractive parts of their space for dining rooms, show windows and display purposes generally, the kitchens and sculleries are crowded into back rooms or driven underground into cellars or basements.

Anything can happen and usually will happen in the dark or in a bad light, and practically every dark corner sooner or later becomes dirty and unsanitary. Commercialism and cooking don't mix well and when the cook's eye is chiefly on profits, stomachs are apt to suffer.