North Adams Restaurant Falling Short of Safety Standards
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The new owners of Meng's Pan-Asian are being ordered to get recertified on food safety standards after city inspectors found violations at the Main Street restaurant.
Code Enforcement Officer Heather DeMarsico asked the Board of Health on Wednesday to require them to retake the ServSafe training and tests.
ServSafe is a program of the National Restaurant Association that sets standards for safe food handling and restaurant management.
DeMarsico told the board that she had shut down the restaurant for a week in September when following up on complaints from two customers who said they had become ill after consuming food from the eatery.
"They've had serious sanitation and safety issues," she said. "They had food without dates. The food wasn't covered, it wasn't being stored right. Food was freezer-burned. They had food that was being prepped, it was placed on the floor. There's nothing in the kitchen that was clean. ...
"No food should have been leaving that kitchen."
There was also an issue with the condition of the stove hood, which had been serviced by a Chinese-speaking company out of New York City that was not licensed in the state of Massachusetts and which had done a poor job in cleaning, said Building Inspector William Meranti. He said they had to go back to the original hood cleaning company but did not know as of Wednesday whether that was done and that inspectors would follow up.
DeMarsico said there had been improvement but she and Meranti said a language barrier was making it difficult. The owners had passed a ServSafe test in December before buying the business in January. The previous owners had come in last month to help them come into compliance.
"They had done a decent job of it. But again, the former owners were going to walk away. They weren't there to babysit them," she said. "So again, my worry is that once they walk away, they're going to go back to their old habits because they don't know what they're doing."
DeMarsico said she was not sure how translation had worked when the new owners took the ServSafe test because they didn't seem to understand the basics.
"Walking in there and just general looking around and generally asking her questions, the competency is not there," she said. "They do not act like they've taken it. There's basic stuff that they don't know."
The health agent had contacted the state Department of Public Health to see if they could recommend translator services and was told there weren't any but DPH could try to get someone from the state to come down. DPH noted the board had the authority to require the test be retaken and suggested that action.
"I don't want to just shut them down if we don't have to," DeMarsico said. "Obviously, you don't want to take away their livelihood. We want to help them if we can."
The board voted to required the test be retaken and the inspectors said they would continue to monitor their progress. No one from Meng's attended the meeting and the inspectors said they had tried several times to contact them.
In other business, the board welcomed new member Bruce Miller.
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