Journalists like to think we're prepared for anything. Yeah, well ... I went to the bathroom and missed the on-stage fight at the Snoop Dogg show at White River a couple years back. Stuff happens.

Something happened Saturday night near the end of dinner:

A big fat fly the size of a raisin emerged from the succotash and hobbled across the table.

Did the fat fly land on the plate? It was a warm night on the mountain, the dining room door was open, the air inside hung.

Did the fat fly get cooked into the dish? It had emerged from the succotash. The fly looked stunned and hobbled, unable to fly. Was that a sheen of sauce on its wings and body?

I had no clue what to.

Atavistic instinct kicked in.

I picked up the glass candle votive and chased the hobbled fly across the table -- trying to smash it as it hobbled under the lip of the bread plate, behind the Coke bottle, and finally off the edge of the table.

Stuff happens, even to -- or perhaps especially to -- restaurant critics.

Since double espressos come with ample shots of pulchritude at Hot-Chick-a-Latte, I ordered mine with milk. A pasty-breasted barista at the Lakewood location happily poured a shot of milk. But the milk didn't mix in, so she helped it along, stirring my iced double espresso with her finger as she leaned over the the coffee hut's window to hand me my cold drink. Hot? Hardly. Ewwww? You betcha.

Stadium Bistro's Weikels: Peter Jr., Peter Sr. and Catharine. RECENTLY ON ED'S DINER Stadium Bistro closing Recouping when a restaurant goes out of business Tiny Infinite Soups extends big gift-card offer

Peter Weikel Jr., who manned the kitchen at the former Stadium Bistro, is now cheffing at Green Turtle in Gig Harbor. Weikel was recently a runner-up for a gig at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center.

Meanwhile, Stadium Bistro's former landlords have cleaned up the food that was left on Stadium Bistro's stove and the garbage that was left inside the restaurant when Weikel and his father, Peter, closed shop three weeks ago.

Stadium Bistro's left-over garbage is particularly disturbing given that Peter Weikel Sr. was in the pest control business before he got into the restaurant business, where rotting food and exposed garbage attract bugs and vermin.

There are two other restaurants in Stadium Bistro's former building; they deserved better than to have one of their neighbors skedaddle and leave a potential health hazard rotting in their midst.

The Weikels have not responded to my telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment on the restaurant's closure or the rotting food they left inside.

Comment by Comment by Mike_T @ 09:37 - Sunday, April 27th, 2008

An employee of one of the two other establishments in the same building told that SB hosted a blow out early last week in which they finished off the last of the liquor there.

Mike_T:

That's inaccurate hearsay. I was in the former Stadium Bistro today. The liquor, beer and wine have been moved from the bar to some tables in the rear. The booze is merely out of view from the restaurant's front windows.

One of the owners of the building told me that he and his helpers had a few beers and some shots of Jameson after they cleaned up the mess in the kitchen.

Among the Stadium Bistro souvenirs that remain: two large stock pots of meat, bones and broth. They're in the freezer because the building's owners haven't been able to figure out what to do with the putrid pots that were left atop Stadium Bistro's stove.

Some vendors have already reclaimed their equipment. Other equipment will be sold at auction.

-- Ed Murrieta

FEED THE GLOVE Food-service workers are required to wear them. What about diners?

I've been eating at buffets for about a week. Somewhere between Old Country and Indian country, I caught a cold.

(I also ate some pretty good buffet grub. My reviews will publish Friday in GO. Here's a sneak: Little Creek and Muckleshoot casinos, despite the weekend waits. Super Buffet, DuPont.)

I saw a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer at Little Creek Casino. It was at the cash register. It was about three-quarters full. In a very unscientific study, I witnessed no one using the hand sanitizer as I waited in line to pay at the register.

My first thought: Hand sanitizer should be on every table at every buffet, salad bar or all-you-can-eat pizza parlor.

My second thought: Patrons who touch tongs, spoons or ladles while loading up at buffets should be made to we wear disposable gloves.

My third thought: Ain't gonna happen.

First of all, it's just a head cold. Second of all, I'm not that anal. Third of all, nothing will keep me from grabbing the Muckleshoot buffet's sauce-slathered-full-of-meat beef ribs between my questionably clean fingers.

Kids sneeze. Old men scratch. How many ladies who lunch at casino buffets wash their hands after playing the slots? Did I wash my hands after giving my dog her nightly bowl of raw poultry?

That's life, ladies and germs. Just one more thing to sneeze at.

I've got a couple more buffets to graze today. I'll be the guy with the hand sanitizer on my gloves.

ED'S NOTE: Today's guest blogger is rivitman, a Tacoma cook and frank patron at Ed's Diner. Regarding a story about kitchen health hazards (and more), I give rivitman the keys to Ed's Diner today. His opinions are uniquely his. They originally appeared in the comments of other posts. They're something to chew on.

UPDTED I've asked Anthony Anton, president of the Washington Restaurant Association, to offer his organization's perspective (or rebuttal) to rivitman. I'll post his response here if and when he replies. -- Ed Murrieta.

=> Read more!

The culture card lay at the bottom of yesterday's Seattle P-I story about King County's top 10 violators of restaurant rules.

One of those restaurants is Wild Ginger, a pricey pan-Asian place in downtown Seattle.

Cooks drawn from China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam come from a food culture very different from that in the U.S., said the owner of Wild Ginger.

"It's still a challenge to try to get people to understand how we view what's sanitary versus (how a) culture that's 5,000 years old (does)," said the owner of Wild Ginger. "They think I'm crazy. I say this is the way we have to do it."

I almost went crazy when I worked at a Nicaraguan bakery in San Francisco.

On my first day I found a fossilized mouse beneath the mixer.

It got worse.

Bad plumbing. Burned-out refrigeration. Mold in the kitchen walls. An oven that looked like it was bought second-hand from a charnel house.

It was my job to clean it up, or work around it. The owner didn't seem to care which.

One day, the health inspector arrived on his regular rounds.

He looked around the kitchen for about 45 seconds.

I counted up the critical violations in my head.

The health inspector scribbled on a form.

He handed me a copy.

See you next time, he said.

I looked at the form: the violations I knew existed were not noted on the form.

I called the San Francisco health department. My efforts to reach the inspector's boss failed. Same with the inspector's boss' boss. They were on vacation. I left messages. Nothing happened. I still had a filthy bakery to fix.

It was a moment straight out of Roman Polanski's "Chinatown."

"Forget it, Jake," I heard that voice say in my head, filled with defeat and grudging acceptance. "It's Chinatown."

Actually, in today's polite world, Chinatown is the International District. Shouldn't we all get along in the global kitchen?

Hey, Food Network, how about a show about food safety, in 10 different languages?

UPDATED Here's an e-mail I received shortly after I posted this. Kids today -- God bless 'em.

I am a 12th grade student and Bellarmine Preparatory School in Tacoma. As part of a student group for an American Government class, we are interested in the potential hazards of the substandard conditions of some Pierce County restaurants. After meeting with Mike Davis of the Tacoma Pierce County Healthy Department, we believe that public perception of food safety regulations may be skewed and are hoping to correct this inaccuracy. Our group would like to speak or meet with you to discuss the feasibility of publishing an article addressing food safety and what to look for in a restaurant.

Citrus served right. New York Times photo

"A server touched a lemon."

That's what a Tacoma chef said in October 2006 when his restaurant was slapped for a bare-hands-and-food violation by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.

“A male worker observed having bare-hand contact with one slice of ready-to-eat lime while placing on top of beer bottle for patron in bar,” reads a New York City Health Department citation, dated Oct. 9, 2007, as reported in the New York Times today.

After waiting five years for the cupcake trend to hit Tacoma, it's nice to be on the leading edge, Tacoma.

Have you ever had food poisoning? What did you do, besides get ill?

I got a call last week from a guy named Dave, a self-described amputee veteran who said he suffered a mondo bout of food poisoning after eating a lobster at a restaurant. He said his ordeal lasted two weeks, including a stint in the hospital.

Dave said he’s not allergic to shell fish. Dave said he’s never had a violently ill reaction to any seafood. Dave said he was looking forward to his lobster; his parents had driven him from Orting to Tacoma for lunch.

Dave said the lobster was soft and soupy, like an oyster in June. Dave said he “slurped it down.” Dave said he barely made it to the restaurant’s restroom. Dave said he spent a couple of days in the hospital, where, he said, doctors told him he had food poisoning.

Proving food poisoning is tricky. Salmonella is the most common type of food poisoning; it can take 24 to 72 hours before symptoms become apparent. Incubation times for other food-borne bacteria vary. Short of an epidemic, it’s tough to peg food-poisoning sources.

So why did Dave call me? He’d already called the restaurant and its corporate 800 number.

“I’d like a damn written apology,” Dave said. “I just want something for the two weeks I wanted to die. Gimme a couple of grand. Make it happen.”

Dave sounded like an angry man. I can appreciate that. Here’s what I told Dave:

I’m not the health department, and there’s a bunch of lawyers in the phone book who can help you with that couple of grand.

If you want to report food poisoning, call the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department: 253-798-6500. They’ve got the ability to inspect and shut down kitchens.

And call when the illness occurs, not a month later.

Good luck, and safe dining.

Whether the food's been cooked or whether the food is going to be served uncooked, Pierce County food service workers are required to wear gloves or use tongs when touching or preparing whatever you might eat. That includes lemon in your iced tea, bread in your basket and garnish on your plate.

Hands, gloves and food preparation -- a topic that's been covered here at Ed's Diner -- comes up in the New York Times today, after an amateur food inspector produced a video that appeared to show a rubber glove in a diner's salad in a New York restaurant.

While only a still image of the video can be found online, the Times intones: "The unusual episode hinted at a larger problem. Twenty years after disposable gloves became common in restaurant kitchens, it is not clear that they prevent the transmission of illness. There are some who argue that the gloves themselves are dangerous to health."

“The reason that workers wear gloves is that they don’t wash their hands as much as they should,” said Denise Korniewicz, a professor at the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies who has studied the efficacy of rubber gloves for more than 20 years. “If you walk into any fast-food restaurant and observe people, they use the cash register, they wipe their nose and then they make your sandwich.”

"Gloves themselves can be an inhibitor to food safety," a Los Angeles County Department of Public Health official told Ed's Diner last year. "Often, employees don't change gloves, which is sort of like not washing your hands."

Some restaurant owners are not sure the gloves make anybody safer, the Times said.

“When your hands are bare you can tell if you get something on them, and you immediately wash,” said Debra Silva, who owns Clem & Ursie’s, a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Mass. “But if you’re wearing gloves, you might have no idea that you’ve touched something dirty.”

The Times said that is easier said than done: Thousands of United States restaurant workers were surveyed for a study published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health in 2005. More than a third said they did not always change their gloves between touching raw meat or poultry and ready-to-eat food.

Then there's the issue of materials. Many people -- workers and diners -- are allergic to latex. Three states have banned latex gloves in restaurants. Vinyl gloves are an alternative, but some scientists believe a chemical in vinyl gloves can cause testicular damage in infants and young men.

The American Latex Allergy Association is pro-handwashing. The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers’ Association (Malaysian companies make most of the gloves used in this country) says allergies are rare.

Last year, Tacoma's Indochine Asian Dining Lounge was shut down for one night after a health inspector saw a cook touch a garnish with his bare hand. Indochine, which does not serve sushi, tried the sushi defense -- that sushi chefs get away with rolling with their bare hands.

"In terms of rolling sushi, a lot of it has to do with touch," the Los Angeles health official told me. "It's like rolling a joint."

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department just says no to that notion.

"Bare-hand contact seems to be an issue with many restaurants," said Diane Westbrook of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. "Often times when the health inspector shows up, the gloves go on. We do cite it when we see it."

After Indochine's kerfuffle, I visited a handful of sushi restaurants. Two Koi was the only sushi restaurant of the bunch where anyone wore gloves while making my sushi. Ironically, the downtown restaurant was the one place where I wished that the person making my sushi had the bare-hands benefit of tactile sensation. Without rubber gloves, perhaps chef Jackie Koh would have felt that piece of plastic wrap that clung to the Angus beef roll he served me.

Midway through telling a story about a woman who was born a man who was having sex with a man who doesn't know she's a man -- you know, just another episode of Jerry Springer -- the guy at the cafe counter, a friend of the proprietors, asked, "Is anyone back there?"

I was back there.

"Can he hear?"

Yeah, I could hear.

I was having a pancake and coffee in Spanaway. I'd already listened to the guy's F-bomb barrage about fixing one of his vehicles. Now he was keeping the cafe up to date on a transgendered Springer episode I may or may not have Tivo'd.

I put down Bukowski and listened. It wasn't exactly breakfast conversation. It was obvious he didn't like women who used to be men.

I tossed five bucks on the table and left. I didn't care about the change or the tip. I didn't want to bother the waitress. She was egging on the proprietors' friend and going, "Gross!"

Ever feel like slapping the cuffs on a dirty restaurant? Photo: Dallas Morning News.

A TNT reader’s letter arrived in my inbox. He described his experience at one local outlet of a national pizza chain thusly:

“It was by far the dirtiest restaurant I have ever been in. The management was rude and the employees had very bad mouths on them.

“I would like information on how to contact the authorities because that [national pizza chain outlet] is very unsanitary and dirty. Any information would help and I thank you and hope I didn't waste your time.”

Sir, that didn't waste my time. I checked out the health inspection report of the national pizza chain outlet in question. In its last routine inspection (March 1, 2006), it was slapped for the critical violation of not providing adequate hand-washing facilities, which could include anything from soap to paper towels to the temperature of the water.

Rudeness and bad mouths are not mentioned on the inspection report. But here’s the place to report sanitation concerns:

Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, 253-798-6500.

Here’s more from the reader’s letter:

I recently went to the [national pizza chain outlet]. I noticed several things going on at once. First the crew would drop stuff on their dirty floor, like the cup they use for cheese, and the rings that go around the pizza. They would drop it on the floor and pick it up and start using without washing it.

The people that cut the pizza would take a topping here and there and eat it. I thought that was disgusting

The restroom was disgusting like it hadn't been cleaned in weeks … there were no paper towels. I remember seeing a sink outside the bathroom so I went to wash my hands at that sink and once again, there were no paper towels. I watched a couple employees go to the bathroom and come out and went over to start making pizza's again.

I'm guessing they didn't wash their hands because there were no paper towels.

When I got home I threw the pizza away because I was not going to eat it. It was disgusting just thinking about the employee's not washing their hands and putting new pizza dough on old pans that had mold on it from who knows when.

A reader called into the newsroom the other day with a tip about cockroaches. She said she had dined at a South Sound pancake parlor. She said she saw roaches crawling on three tables –- and one roach that she said crawled out of a customer's crepe.

Here's what the caller said happened next: The pancake parlor manager picked roaches off the table and asked the customers if they wanted their "meals repaired." The caller told the TNT's Reader Representative that she was going to tell her story to the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department.

I checked out the pancake parlor's inspection report on the Health Department's Food Service Inspection Reports Web page. Between March 24, 2005 and May 22, 2006 (the Health Department's online records go back one year), the pancake parlor was not cited for any pest-control violations. It was cited five times for critical violations, including hand-washing and holding-temperature infractions. It was dinged seven times for lesser violations.