Vacancies, pests and diseases confront Los Angeles restaurant inspectors

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It's Sunday, March 17th. I'm Andrew J. Campa and Happy St. Patrick's Day 🍀. Here's what you need to know today:

Los Angeles County health inspectors are stuck in a kitchen nightmare

In one of the early seasons of the hit show “Kitchen Nightmares,” famous, loud, and sometimes loud, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay visits a health-conscious restaurant in Hollywood.

We were served stale and tasteless entrees, while the owner is aloof and the kitchen staff are uninterested. Ramsay then finds spoiled vegetables, rotting proteins, grass growing from the ceiling, and a variety of meats melting away in the same containers when he looks into the kitchen.

Ramzi told the restaurant employees, demanding that the store be cleaned: “If a health inspector had witnessed what I saw in one of the refrigerators, the matter would have been over.”

He pasted a handmade “F” above the “A” grade that inspectors had once given.

That episode was filmed more than a decade ago.

But there's a 2024 crisis within the ranks of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health food inspectors.

Inspections are down dramatically, morale is low, and employee vacancy rates are high. Workers were left reeling last month by the workplace suicide of a 55-year-old health inspector. Others reported finding kitchens infested with insects that spread due to lack of inspections, The Times's Rebecca Ellis reported.

Realistic numbers

Internal county records reviewed by Rebecca showed there were nearly 18,000 “high-risk” food establishments in the county that the health department should have inspected three times last year, but less than 2% were. Exactly 5365 were not checked at all.

In 2019, inspectors visited nearly 12,000 of the highest-risk food establishments three times, the province said.

The Westin Bonaventure's main kitchen had not been inspected for eight months when an outbreak of shigella, a bacteria that can spread through contaminated food, occurred in late August.

More than 30 people were injured, four guests were taken to hospital and one was told by a doctor that her kidneys had stopped working.

Although it's impossible to say that more inspections could have prevented the outbreak, health experts say inspections play a crucial role in preventing such incidents.

However, inspections are not intensified, largely due to the very low number of inspectors.

Although the county has a budget for 244 field inspectors, it only has 69 vacant positions, with 27 inspectors in training. A department spokesperson said an “industry-wide shortage of qualified applicants” had crippled public health goals.

The ministry also blamed the COVID-19 pandemic, which has burdened health departments across the country as staff are now required to implement new safety protocols. Many quit.

Where the wild things are

When inspectors returned to the Westin Bonaventure in September, they found eight live German cockroaches, a dead American cockroach, and about 20 fruit flies.

Michael Matibagh, a health ministry employee for six years, said he struggles to get into high-risk restaurants even once a year.

When he arrived in the kitchen of a Korean restaurant in La Verne in October, he said the mice thrived during his year-long absence.

“I'm talking about 50 individual rat poo pieces,” said Matebag, who said he wants to see his department do better. “Fifty rodents falling over won't happen overnight.”

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Death in the family

On February 13, a mob of angry employees confronted Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer after longtime inspector Heather Hughes committed suicide in her office building.

Staff have raised long-standing concerns. Trust in management has eroded. One employee said she had filed 34 complaints. Another said they felt like a damaged “zombie.”

“We are very stressed. We feel, to be honest with you, abused and mistreated,” said one employee.

To learn more about the experiences county inspectors face, please click here.

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Los Angeles Affairs

Immerse yourself in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.

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I was a teenager preparing to enter Sequoia Preparatory High School in Reseda in 1960. My father heard that there was a new drama teacher at the school named Mr. C who was going to put on his first play. Four years later, we got married. For 57 years, I loved being married to Robert Carelli – now 93 – and I'm so glad Mr. C made the bold decision to marry his 18-year-old babysitter on March 17, 1967.

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Andrew J. Campa, Reporter
Stephanie Chavez, deputy editor of Metro

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