Chan's Personal Blog

This story should be interesting to people who dine out a lot in the Victoria region. The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) has an online restaurant inspection database for the Victoria area available for the public to view and search. It's pretty cool because you can look at all of the restaurant inspection reports that the VIHA has done at all the restaurants in the Greater Victoria area. You can search based on restaurant name, street, or by district. In addition, the reports highlight restaurants that do very well in their inspections. The reports ultimately assess the food safety of different restaurants, and gives it a low, moderate, or high hazard rating.

[Updated Aug 10, 2005] I also found that the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCHA) also has their online restaurant inspection database for the Vancouver area. So, if you're dining in Vancouver, this will be useful.

The following hazards are explained as:

• Low: During the inspection the facility was found to be in general compliance with the Food Premises Regulation and is following safe food handling procedures. There were no Critical Hazards and either no, or a small number of Sanitation & Maintenance problems identified at the time of inspection. The Environmental Health Officer has determined that there are no related food safety issues that require further action at this time.


• Moderate: During the inspection the facility was found to be mostly in compliance with the Food Premises Regulation, however there are some difficulties related to food handling and/or procedures. The Environmental Health Officer has determined that there are issues related to food safety practices that require correction in order to ensure long-term protection of public health.
  


• High: During the inspection significant problems were noted relating to safe food handling and/or sanitation and maintenance within the facility. This may include issues such as potentially hazardous foods being stored above acceptable temperatures, the use of foods from unapproved sources or extremely unsanitary conditions existing. The Environmental Health Officer has determined that the current operation and/or food safety practices significantly increases the risk of foodborne illness and the operator must take immediate corrective action. The facility may be approaching the maximum acceptable level of risk considered for continued operation and may be closed if conditions worsen or the operator fails to correct or eliminate the hazards identified.
  

There are a few choice assessments that I found while going through the database:

1. Improper Construction / Maintenance of Establishment
   
   Your food preparation and food storage areas are seriously deficient in cleanliness. Your two previous routine health inspection reports have asked for better cleaning.
   
   You are hereby ordered to thoroughly clean all areas of the food preparation and storage rooms on or before noon of August 6, 2004. Failure to comply with this order may result in further action.
   
   This facility was given a High hazard rating.


2. Inadequate Insect / Rodent Control
   
   Five dead mice in snap traps observed in 2nd level storage area (no food in this area). Operator to contact PCO to address and follow PCO recommendations to eliminating access points, etc.

This isn't meant to freak you out. Please don't get all alarmist about dining out; however, food poisoning is not fun, so sometimes it's good to check out a restaurant's record before going to it. In either case, I found it somewhat entertaining to look-up restaurants that I know are sketchy, and it turns out they are .

P.S. Myron, remember that Taiwanese restaurant that we sometimes went to? There are a few sketchy reports about them. Nothing as bad as rats like Adrian claimed they had though.