At least six Chicago restaurants have failed their city health inspection four times each in 2014, according to an analysis of Chicago Department of Public Health data published last week.
That's the highest number of times an individual restaurant failed an inspection this year, the analysis shows.
The eateries include Trinity Bar in Lincoln Park, Hana Restaurant in Rogers Park and Nuevo Leon in Pilsen. Other familiar names show up farther down the list of restaurants notching failed inspections on several occasions, including Lao Sze Chuan's Chinatown location, with three fails, Clarke's Diner on Lincoln, with three failing grades and Little Goat Diner on the Near West Side, with two failing grades.
A failing grade does not automatically mean the city will shutter a restaurant. Restaurants typically have anywhere from 48 hours to 7 days to fix whatever problems led to the violations, according to Gerrin Butler, the city's director of food inspection, and most are found to be back in compliance with the city's laws after receiving one failing grade.
The analysis, created by Brandon Harris, a data scientist and University of Chicago graduate student, uses information culled from the city's data portal to rank the restaurants based on which have had the most failed health inspections this year, and which have had the most severe ratings from the city on their failed inspections.
He wrote a computer program to analyze the city's data as part of a graduate school assignment.
In Chicago a full-service restaurant is subject to annual inspection, Butler said. Full-service eateries are defined as those that offer table service, prepare food to-order-as opposed to heating up pre-cooked, frozen food-and are designed for meals to be consumed primarily at the restaurant, Butler said.
Inspectors will return to the restaurant multiple times in a year if it receives a failing grade on its annual inspection. A restaurant will continue to be inspected as long as it continues to receive a failing grade, she said, unless its problems are so significant that it must close.
Nuevo Leon, a popular Mexican restaurant's Pilsen outpost, was temporarily shuttered in August after inspectors cited it for improper food storage and live roaches, among other citations.
The restaurant's managers said inspections have grown more strict in recent years and penalized the restaurant for not refrigerating food "properly," without taking into account their made-to-order cooking methods.
"I am still very upset about the closing, it was very unfair," Daniel Gutierrez Jr., the manager, said. "Many people don't care that you've been in business for 52 years."
Gutierrez, whose family owns Nuevo Leon, said the restaurant is complying with the inspectors' directives, which included using new food prep and storage systems and setting up a partition wall in the kitchen.
"We had to make some changes, which we've done, and there's no other way but forward," he said. "When we're told to do things one way, we're going to make those changes in order for us to provide a healthy atmosphere and healthy food for anybody."
Managers for Lao Sze Chuan and Trinity Bar, which were temporarily closed by the city earlier this year, did not respond to multiple phone calls requesting comment this week. Little Goat Diner, a popular offshoot of the West Loop's Girl and the Goat restaurant, originally was listed as having three failed inspections this year, but representatives for the restaurant are disputing this number with the city and declined to comment.
A failed health inspection doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea to eat at a certain restaurant, since restaurants can receive a fail just for being closed when the inspector arrives to do a surprise inspection, according to Butler. The data entered into the city's data portal, which Harris pulled for his analysis, could also have some entry errors, Butler said. But multiple fails can give consumers insight into how a restaurant is operated, she said.
"The more inspections they have, the bigger a picture you have about how that restaurant operates," Butler said. "If they have more fails, that tells you something. More passes, that tells you something else."
The six restaurants with four failing grades this year are:- Trinity Bar at 2751 N. Halsted St.
- Taj Mahal at 1512 W. Taylor St.
- Hana Restaurant at 6803 N. Sheridan Rd.
- Fischman's Wagyu Wagon at 324 N. Leavitt St.
- Nuevo Leon Restaurant at 1515 W. 18th St.
- Lawndale Food Market at 3705-3713 W. 16th St.
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