CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If you're heading out to eat for the weekend, you'll want to make sure you check the health inspection scores of your favorite restaurants.
You never know what's happening in the kitchen and sometimes, what's going on can make you sick. This week's report has three popular places that scored B's on their inspections.
First up is a food truck. The Juwan Food Cart. The inspector noted that the person in charge stepped out, handled trash, took payments and went back to handling food without washing their hands. The person was wearing gloves, but the law says you still have to wash and change them.
As for the food, a lot of what they had was too warm when it should have been cold, meaning below 41 degrees, and someone working with food wasn't wearing a required hairnet. Their grade? An 86, that's a B.
Next is Fresh Chef on Providence Road. They were cited for not active managerial control over temperature issues and an employee was handling both clean and dirty dishes. They were wearing gloves, but that's still against the rules. Their ice machine had black debris in it and many of their foods, from angel hair pasta to smoked salmon, were undated. Their grade at Fresh Chef was an 83.5, that's also a B.
Finally is the Barcelona Wine Bar on Worthington Avenue. The bartender was seen handling garnishes with their bare hands and putting them in drinks. That's OK at home, but not in a business that serves food. They had oysters and clams without tags telling the staff how old they were and their meatball sauce, which was cooked the day before, still hadn't cooled so it was thrown away. Cooked foods have to cool within a certain amount of hours or be tossed.
Some of these violations seem like no big deal, but these regulations are in place for public health reasons and they are important.