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?