Restaurant Report For Sept. 7, 2011: Roaches & Slime

HOUSTON – Have you decided what you're doing for dinner tonight? You may want to hold off on your plans just long enough to see this week's good, bad and just plain gross report from the Houston Health Department.

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We're starting this week at Tokyo One on Greens Road at Highway 249, but managers here probably wish we wouldn't.  Health inspectors said they found a live roach in the restaurant's bulk container of rice and a dead roach in a container of raw chicken.

"We ... they ... we threw it out immediately ... both of them," said restaurant manager Henry Chang. 

That is true, but inspectors said a cook used his bare hands to remove the insects.

"What if the health inspector hadn't been here that day?" Davis asked Chang. "Would you have served it?"

"No, no," replied Chang.  "We find anything in the food, we throw it away, automatically."

There were dead roaches on the bathroom floor at the Popeye's at 5817 Lockwood.

At the Daddy n Daughter restaurant inside the Super H Mart on Blalock, inspectors found a live roach near the food prep table. They said that's also where employees were storing cutting boards on the floor. Owner Martin Kim told Davis that was a misunderstanding.

"We don't use that cutting board anymore," Kim explained.  "It was stored away, but he didn't want to see that ... and we weren't using that cutting board."

It was dried rodent droppings that concerned inspectors at the Cajun Corner at 11526 Bellaire Blvd.

At the Oriental Village at 13159 Northwest Freeway, inspectors said they found pink and tan slime in the ice machine.

The slime was black at the Denny's at 12862 Northwest Freeway.

Enough with the gross findings -- onto the good reports.

Taco Don Juan is a restaurant on wheels that rolled through the inspection with no violations.

Panera Bread at 13704 Northwest Freeway came out squeaky clean.

The Chelsea Deli & Cafe at 1538 Kingwood Drive got clean bill.

A  lot of you sent us restaurants to check out last week, but we need you to send your complaints to the health department. They'll send an inspector out within 24 hours. Then come back to Local 2 every week to see what inspectors discovered.


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Passionate consumer advocate, mom of 3, addicted to coffee, hairspray and pastries.