Safety always is the chief ingredient when it comes to cooking.
This is why health boards and health agents are charged with enforcing the restaurant food storage, preparation and sanitation regulations. They are working to ensure that food isn’t the issue when someone gets sick after eating.
In the case of the Clay Oven, the Indian restaurant on Main Street in Greenfield, the town acted to enforce safety regulations, because of the persistent violations it had found following a number of inspections. The health board provided the restaurant owners with plenty of opportunities to self-correct the food safety issues that were found. Some might say the town was too patient.
Since opening in December 2013, it appears that the Clay Oven has had issues. According to the health agent’s June 22 report to the board, the restaurant has been “written up for the same violations since their first routine inspection conducted on March 20, 2014.” Three routine inspections were conducted and the same violations were occurring between March 2015 and January 2016. At this point, the health agent began spot checking the establishment, where she “continued to observe the same critical violations.”
Those critical violations, designated “red-critical” because of the potential threats to public health, included rodent fecal droppings in storage containers for bowls used for serving food and insect carcasses on prep counters.
Other violations ranged from failure to properly and safely store raw meats, failure to store and serve foods at the proper temperatures, improper control or venting of the grease generated by the restaurant’s kitchen equipment and ongoing pest and sanitation issues.
These sorts of health code violations led the board to close the restaurant for a week at the end of June. During that time, it was hoped that the restaurant would literally clean up its act. This included having a professional cleaning crew go over the restaurant, and the staff was provided formal training in ServSafe food safety standards.
Unfortunately, in the town’s view, all of the corrective measures didn’t stick.
“Since re-opening, the Health Department has conducted weekly inspections and has since seen an improvement, and, although I have wanted to change the weekly inspections to bi-weekly or monthly, I have not yet felt satisfied to do so,” wrote Health Inspector Brianna Eichstaedt in a Sept. 7 report the board received. “Each week, I conduct a thorough inspection, as well as a re-inspection from the previous week. I am having a difficult time getting full compliance each week.”
As Board of Health Chairman William Doyle said at a hearing with Clay Oven owners this month, “It’s not our job to babysit you,” he said. “It’s up to you to come up with a plan to fix it, and I’m not sure you’ve done that.”
Even in indefinitely suspending the Clay oven’s license, the board is still trying to see the restaurant move forward, by giving it two months to develop a plan to solve its problems.
It’s now up to the restaurant owners to seize this last chance.