Have You Checked your local restaurants cleanliness lately?

I just did and what I discovered was......well let's say, I will think twice before ordering from some long time establishment favorites in the future.

This all started because we ordered dinner from a little local place where we sometimes grab breakfast before heading into the city. I ordered meatloaf with mashed potatoes (a favorite of mine). When it arrived, it was large and delicious looking, upon taking a first bite I completely changed my opinion of this meal sitting before me. Strangely enough MY MEATLOAF TASTED LIKE FISH! I know, this makes no sense you say, I agree. I sniffed around and took another bite....FISH! At this point I was starting to feel like a crazy person. I started to eat my mashed potatoes instead as I pondered my fishy meatloaf. Then I spotted it, a fish scale! Mr. Mouse confirmed this with me and I immediately flipped out. We called the place and they assured us that there was no way this was possible, instead of simply refunding our money the guy insisted on sending over a completely new meal (as if i would even look at it). When the delivery boy came with the meal we handed him the fish parts on a little lid and asked him to take them to his boss. Although I know that they were probably thrown into a gutter, it made me feel better to show them to someone from the establishment. What we think happened was the breading that was used in the meatloaf was also used on the fish and some of it got mixed into the meat.

After dinner I was still a little mad and wanted to file a complaint with the health department so I went to the website to see what I had to do. Out of curiosity I wanted to see if this restaurant has any other violations........it does, it has a lot of them, but not as many as some other restaurants in my area. http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml. If you need information on restaurants in NYC check that web site. We found out that one of our favorite restaurants while being delicious and having a great atmosphere is also clean (YAY!). We found out that a different place we order has 89 violations!!!!! yuck! the restaurant that started this little adventure has only 23 reported violations, one of them includes cross contamination of foods.

We have been getting lazy with our purchasing of fresh groceries and making our own food, perhaps this is the wake up call that we needed to get back into our healthy eating habits, but geez did a perfectly good piece of meatloaf have to be ruined in the process of this little reminder???

Signing off

A grossed out City Mouse