The ABCs of Restaurant Rating

On September 14th, USC's student newspaper, Daily Trojan, published an article that left bad tastes in many students' mouths (if the cafeteria foods themselves didn't already):

"EVK Receives 'B' After Health Inspection"

EVK, otherwise known as Everyone's Kitchen, is one of the main cafeterias on the USC campus where students can gorge on buffet-styled, Freshman-15 inducing eatables in attempt to get their overpriced meal plans' worths. 

This article is alarming to students especially since Chanos, the well known post-boozing, late night Mexican drive-through hut located at the end of the Greek Row on Figueroa street has a health inspection rating of "A". Although most students are unfamiliar with the Los Angeles Health Department's restaurant rating criteria, they still make some judgement of the restaurants based on relativity. We can blame the education system for instilling in us the belief that A is better than B. And if you get a C, you can go home and expect to get your cell phone taken away for the next 2 weeks. 

Premature conclusion: It is safer to eat at Chanos than EVK. 

I'm not trying to defend EVK, for it has caused me many nights of upset stomach Freshman year. The point I'm trying to make here is that when it comes to restaurant ratings, the letters do not tell the whole story. 

Health departments inspect restaurants using scorecards. Restaurants are graded based on different criteria, including food temperature, food source, food protection, facility design, and personal hygiene. Each violation within the criteria is worth a different amount of points. Therefore, restaurants want to keep their scores as low as possible, because a low score indicates fewer violations. 

For the restaurant letter grading system, restaurants that receives 13 points or less will score an A, 14-27 points will score a B, 28 points or more will score a C with high likelihood of getting shut down. 

Although the letter may tell diners how many violation a restaurant has, it doesn't say what these violations are. Personally, I would much rather go to a restaurant that fails to provide toilet paper in the bathrooms and has inadequate lighting than a restaurant where rats roam freely in the kitchen.. But based on the scorecard, these 2 restaurants may receive the same letter grade. 

So the letters that Los Angeles restaurants (possibly to be adopted by other cities soon, such as NYC) either proudly or ashamedly display in their windows only partially signal the restaurants' wellness. For more restaurant reviews that are posted by real restaurant patrons and not government officials, customers can check out websites like Yelp and Zagat. These websites can provide restaurant information that the ABCs don't. 

Oh ya, and if it helps EVK diners feel any better, EVK's rating was raised to an A after a second health inspection last week. 

But that doesn't necessarily mean the cooks wash their hands after they use the bathrooms.