Restaurant Report

Clean & Safe? Our ratings of food safety in 3,800 Philly restaurants

A ground-breaking project with a database of food-safety records over the last five years.

Downey's Restaurant, the Irish pub that has been a fixture at South and Front streets for years, is well known for its $16.95 lobster special, a fully stocked raw bar and an array of chowders.

Less well known is its overall record on food safety. Over the last five years, the restaurant has been cited by the city's Health Department for 195 violations and has been taken to court twice by the city. In one report, in November 2009, city inspector Bruce Ennels noted 18 violations, including his observation that the floors, walls and ceiling of Downey's kitchen were filthy, while fruit flies and other insects hovered in the bar and basement food-storage areas.

In October 2013, another inspection noted a problem with a refrigeration unit. "Uncovered sheperd's pie, lobster bisque, heavy cream held at 50+ degrees, rather than 41 degrees F or below as required," inspector Milaya Gregory noted, adding, "Items have been discarded."

The good news is that the restaurant's food-safety performance has improved. In the most recent inspection, in March of this year, Downey's had only six violations, most of them fairly minor.

Domenico Centofanti, Downey's owner, did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment.

Restaurant inspection records can be found on the Health Department's website, but pity the poor consumer who tries to make sense of them. The city offers no summary of its findings, and no rating of restaurants on food safety. Instead, it simply posts facsimiles of thousands of inspection reports, written in thick bureaucratese. There are 56,000 reports in all, dating between 2009 and 2014, reporting on all places that serve prepared food: schools, hospitals, take-out restaurants, food trucks, nursing homes, hospitals and even prisons.

For this project, we created a searchable database of the city's eat-in restaurants, large and small, famous and unknown, that collectively comprise the city's vibrant restaurant scene. Philadelphia's national reputation as a great restaurant town is well deserved, but there's been far less talk about the less glittery issue of food safety.

Other cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, help restaurant customers by giving letter grades to each eatery, based on the number of food-safety violations, which they must post in public. Potential customers can tell at a glance if a restaurant got an "A" or a "C" in food safety. Restaurant owners in these cities gripe about the system, saying it hurts their businesses and unfairly judges them on a one-time inspection.

Philadelphia's efforts begin and end with the posting of the online inspection reports — more than 18,000 in the last five years involving 3,800 "eat-in" restaurants, as the city classifies them.

Palak Raval-Nelson, the Health Department official who oversees food-safety inspections, said the city has no intention of following the lead of other cities and posting grades. She said the department prefers to work with restaurants to meet food-safety guidelines, rather than to be adversarial.

While the Health Department may be reluctant to provide more consumer-friendly information, City Paper is not. As part of a joint project between CP and AxisPhilly investigative journalism website, the entire contents of the inspection records were obtained from the HealthDepartment site and converted into a searchable database.

After consulting with people in the food-service industry, we applied a numerical value to each violation and emerged with an evaluation for each restaurant that gives its average score for food safety since 2009.

Restaurants rarely emerge from an inspection with no violations (only 127 got the best score, which is a zero). Andres Marin, a former chef who is professor of culinary arts at the Community College of Philadelphia, is not surprised.

An inspection "is very meticulous," he said. "They will hit you on low pH levels. They will hit you on the wrong signage. There are too many regulations and there will always be violations."

Marin, who served as a consultant on this project, said the key is for restaurants with violations to correct them quickly, certainly by the time an inspector does a follow-up inspection, which is usually within 30 days.

The points assigned in our evaluation are like golf scores: The lower the number, the better the performance. The citywide average for all restaurants was 27, but the range of scores varied widely: from zero to 161. Downey's, for instance, scored 100 — nearly four times above the average.

Two pieces of good news emerged from the data: First, most restaurants in the city meet or exceed the Philadelphia average for food safety. That list includes most of the best-known eateries in town, including restaurants owned and operated by Stephen Starr, Jose Garces and Mark Vetri.

Of the 3,894 restaurants rated, 77 percent scored better or equal to the industry average of 27 points. About 23 percent scored below.

We assigned each of them stars — from four stars to one — based on our evaluation of the scores.

A number of restaurants that performed the worst on our evaluation are neighborhood pubs or pizza places.

Some better-known establishments scored significantly worse than the citywide average of 27. This list includes Ocean City Seafood on Ninth Street (155), Marathon on the Square at 19th and Spruce (125), Pyramid Club at 17th and Market (98), the Oak Lane Diner on the 6500 block of North Broad Street (79), Il Cantuccio on North Third Street (70) and, in an exception to the rule of Garces' restaurants doing well, Tinto/Village Whiskey on South 20th Street (64), which share a kitchen.

The second piece of good news is that the department has stepped up its inspection efforts. In 2009, the department inspected only one in four restaurants. In 2013, it inspected four out of five.

Since Raval-Nelson arrived in 2009, the department has had a goal of inspecting each food establishment at least once a year — though there are still some that haven't been inspected at all, or only once or twice during the last five years.

The department is budgeted to have 29 inspectors, who are called sanitarians, to handle the caseload. There are also 10 sanitarian supervisors.

Raval-Nelson also tightened regulations. Previously, inspectors could show up for visits whenever they wanted, even when restaurants weren't actually preparing food. That practice was ended.

Raval-Nelson also implemented a "risk-based" inspection model that the Food and Drug Administration had recommended in 2006. The new protocol called for annual inspections at all food facilities as a starting point, with more frequent inspections for so-called "high-risk" institutions, such as sushi restaurants or nursing-home commissaries.

Marin said that previously inspectors would do a "walk through" of a restaurant. Today, the data shows, they often spend hours observing operations while the food is being prepared. In addition, the city requires that each restaurant have an employee present who is trained and certified in food safety — and inspectors strictly enforce this requirement, telling owners to cease and desist operations if they lack a certified employee.

But strict regulations alone will only do so much. Businesses with exceptionally unsafe conditions get a chance to correct serious problems during a follow-up visit that is supposed to take place within 30 days. If a restaurant fails to resolve its issues after two return visits, in theory, the case is referred to the Law Department for legal action. Restaurants with certain "critical violations," like extensive rodent and insect infestation or a lack of hot water, are told to shut down immediately. Blatant scofflaws eventually get their license taken away by the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I).

At least, that's how it's supposed to work. In practice, these abilities are either rarely exercised or rarely effective.

At precisely the moment when additional enforcement is required, the Health Department hands off the cases to other city departments. The sanitarians do not have the power to make anyone cease and desist (and the records show some restaurants have ignored the order). Officially, that order must come from L&I.

As to repeat offenders, the department hands those cases over to the Law Department to file civil action against the alleged offender in Common Pleas Court. Over the last five years, the records show, the Health Department has referred 298 cases to the Law Department to file civil suits.

The records also show that court hearings are routinely postponed. L&I has a spotty record in issuing cease and desist orders. With persistence, owners can evade being closed or shut down and have their cases linger for years.

Erica Singleton, a former city sanitary inspector who worked in North and West Philly until late 2011, placed some of the blame on deceptive restaurant owners and a lack of communication between the Health Department and L& I's licensing system.

"If a restaurant gets their license taken away, one of the loopholes is that they could get a cousin or their wife or husband to get a new license in their name," she said. "It could be the same family in there, but someone else 'owns' the store ... it's considered a new establishment and while the fees and violations don't just go away, they get to start over."

In addition, Singleton said, the department has no nighttime staff. Its inspectors go off duty at 4:30 p.m.

"So a lot of times what [restaurant owners] will do is remain closed during our work hours if they don't have their license," said Singleton. "After those work hours, they'd try to open, and a lot of times we'd have to take it upon ourselves, if we were on our way home and it was in our direction, to look at [the restaurant] and make sure they were remaining closed."

With enforcement in the hands of others, Singleton said it was "very frustrating, because you're limited in what you can do."

Additionally, health inspectors frequently encounter restaurant owners who are struggling financially or have a limited understanding of English. Language barriers are a serious issue, as inspectors have to call a special translator hotline in order to explain violations to foreign-born restaurant owners.

Restaurant owners are not happy with the increase in the frequency and intensity of inspections and have complained to city officials about the process.

However, there's some evidence that simply stepping up inspections is paying off. Back at Downey's, a particularly aggressive fusillade of inspections over the years — 20 in all — does seem to have resulted in improved conditions. The restaurant had its best inspection in years in March.

Singleton said it was worth noting that, ideally, the goal of inspectors isn't to get restaurants with problems to shut down; it's to get them to comply with the health code.

"We try to educate [restaurant owners] on how to go about fixing problems, depending on severity," she said. "It's really not a black-and-white type of job. Each situation is different."

Richard Landau, a chef and owner of Vedge restaurant at 1221 Locust St., whose restaurant scored very well in food-safety performance, said he didn't find the city's regulations difficult to meet. He called most of the regulations "Food Safety 101" that all chefs should know by heart.

"Our state of mind is that you have to keep your kitchen in a state where you could get inspected at any moment," he said. "They (inspectors) will always find something, just make sure that what they find is minor."

More than simply meeting regulations, Landau said restaurant owners and chefs have an obligation to keep their kitchens clean, saying it is a matter of "integrity."

"This is food," Landau said. "I am trusting someone to cook my food. How could they not keep their kitchens clean? It is part of the job."

Readrelated stories:

The methodology we used to create this project.

Letter from the editor: Why we did this project

CP's points for 20 popular restaurants.