Seattle's 5 Worst Food-Safety Offenders

• the collum is called "The Shit List"... that's kinda the point.

• because that is tacky. we live in seattle, not a third world country.

• These restaurants listed are not even close to the nastiest restaurants in Seattle/Bellevue.  There are 2 that had over 100 points.   Check out http://www.dinegerous.com/   - set the parameters on top and its easy to pick out the real nasty ones.   We really need a better way of informing the public and especially the tourists before they step into places like this.  Its too secretive. 

• Posting letter grades is all well and good but first the Department of Health needs to make sure their inspectors are all on the same page. Having moved to Seattle as a chef, I found it a joke of the inspections I recieved not so thourough as previous cities Ii had lived in, plus the inspector was so enamoured with our group of restaurants I don't know if he would flag us for any serious violations if found one anyway.

• Two restaurants are in the U-District, 1 in Ballard, yet the tags are downtown and the ID. Of course, violations is misspelled, too.  WTF is happening with the Weekly?

• Transparency?    If this article wasn't printed I would have not about the violations.  And I don't recall you posting an advertisement stating your side until this article was written.   Why should I have to go to a county web site to tell me how clean or nasty a restaurant is before I step in?  Are tourist supposed to know about this county website?  Do you or any other restaurant in Seattle list this website on your menu or anywhere else in your establishment?   These are the reason why Seattle should copy other cities and make the restaurants post their most recent health inspection results i.e. posting a letter grade on the door or window of the establishment.

• There is no reason why Seattle does not adopt a policy like in Los Angeles where every restaurant has a letter grade posted on their window that states how they did in their last health inspection.   Why would a restauranteur not want the customers to know how well they did unless they keep an unsanitary kitchen.   The inspector could post it when they do their inspection. 

• Two things: Not sure of your of your process here, but there seem to be many places that have higher scores that what you've listed.  Just in my neighborhood, Cedar's seems to be at a 73 and Shalimar is at 88.  Why are these and other places over Szechuan Seven Star's 70 not included? Also, I'm pretty sure your point about your own kitchen's cleanliness is dubious.  I'm certain that if your kitchen (or my kitchen) were inspected as closely as the city inspects these places our scores would be much worse.  I know for a fact that I store meat above some vegetables.  My food cleaning sink is the same as my hand washing sink.  I do not hold cooked food at appropriate temperatures.  That's not to say that these inspections aren't necessary and useful (or that restaurants shouldn't be held to higher standards), but I wouldn't get carried away believing that our home kitchens are especially cleaner than these or any restaurant kitchens.

• It'd probably be more useful to see which restaurants have had repeated violations over time, rather than simply the highest scores for a single reporting period. All of the data points were from reviews conducted in April. How does this help me understand which restaurants may have problems *now*?

• Thank you so much for clearing this up! It's great to see quality places like Bastille making every effort to keep the food safe, so we can keep enjoying it!

• Bastille would like to let the dining public know that we take food safety very seriously and have fixed the issues that were addressed by the King County Health Department on 4.19.2011. The 30 point violation involved a cooling procedure that we were not aware was in violation of code. We have remedied this procedure and all other points of violation. We appreciate the transparency with which food safety information is delivered, and are committed to ensuring that all of our practices are in line with current code.

• Why do you guys focus on so much negative stuff in so many of your articles?

• 2am in Bellevue should be in there!

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