jmcquown wrote:
> Sheldon's query about Chinese restaurants in Seattle got me thinking
> about this. Do you read restaurant reviews prior to eating in one?
> Even if it's in your own town? There's a place in Memphis called
> 'Mortimer's'. I've never been there (heh, I remember when there was a
> dress shop at that location.) I was doing a search for someone and ran
> across this rant by a former employee (no, it wasn't me!). Talk about
> waiter rants...
>
> "I am a former employee of Mortimer's, and I would like to take this
> chance to warn anyone who might think of dining there about the godawful
> unsanitary conditions there. Some examples:
>
> 1. I once saw a waiter carrying a sandwich out to a table. Just before
> he exited the kitchen, he dropped the top piece of bread on the floor.
> He picked it up, dusted it off on his shirt, put it back on the
> sandwich, and took it out to serve it.
>
> 2. I saw an employee knock over a five-gallon bucket of shrimp which
> spilled all over the floor (the floor in the kitchen is filthy, by the
> way). The dishwasher began scooping up the shrimp and throwing it in a
> garbage can. The kitchen manager ran over and started cussing the
> dishwasher, saying that the shrimp was way too expensive to just throw
> away, and that he (the dishwasher) would either put the shrimp back in
> the bucket to serve to customers or he would be fired.
>
> 3. Each table is given a complementary basket of rolls. There is a
> basket next to the dish area in the kitchen. When servers bus a table,
> they are required to salvage any rolls that have not been eaten off of
> and put them in this basket to be recycled for the next table.
>
> I don't know how a place this filthy and disgusting has managed to stay
> in business. I can only assume that they pay bribes to the health
> department."
>
> That's enough to put me off a place. But I probably wouldn't have read
> it if I hadn't been looking something else up.
>
> Jill

I don't value the opinion of reviewers because many seem to have an
agenda or are just wanting to fill column space. I like to get the
opinions of "real" people such as friends or associates. In the case of
Asian communities I like getting tips from the locals on where they eat.
I also have a rule that the more a place is marketed telling us all of
its imagined virtues the better it is to avoid.

I also get lots of information from my buddy who has a commercial
refrigeration business who really gets to see the backend of
restaurants. He says many of the heavily marketed big box industrial
places are the worst followed by some of the "upscale" locals. He has
all sorts of stories of food items spilled on the floor and scooped back
up, unrefrigerated seafood and filthy conditions.

My niece worked at one of the bigbox places and she said that if the
whipped cream and fruit pies weren't sold they would wash off the fruit
and store it for the next day.