After receiving a conditional pass from a Toronto Public Health inspection last October, University of Toronto Scarborough restaurant Rex’s Den is getting back on its feet by enforcing stricter sanitary rules and updating their employee training procedures.
Outlined in the TPH’s Establishment Inspection Report, Rex’s Den fell short in 11 areas including proper washing of room surfaces, providing towels in the food preparation area and thermometers in the storage compartment, proper use of utensils, containers and wrappings to avoid contamination and hand contact with food, and ensuring the food-handling room’s ceiling is kept clean and in good repair.
In compliance to TPH stipulations, Rex’s Den displayed a yellow conditional pass on its front entrance for 48 hours, when the follow-up inspection was set to occur assuring that their infractions had been corrected. The sign also acted as a way to inform customers that they faced potential health risks by choosing to eat at the restaurant at the time.
But patron Alline Kazarian maintains that seeing the yellow pass did not discourage her from ordering her usual. “After a brief conversation with one of the servers, I decided that these infractions weren’t serious enough for me to reconsider my choice to eat at Rex’s.”
Echoing Kazarian’s comment, it is outlined in the TPH’s “Food Premises Inspection and Disclosure System” that having “a potential health risk to the public” does not necessarily indicate that it is “unsafe” to eat at that particular establishment.
Joel Clark, business manager of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union, who also own Rex’s Den, explained that all infractions were corrected either during or a few hours after the inspection, garnering the restaurant a green pass, which indicates that the premises is in compliance with the TPH’s sanitary standards.
Receiving the conditional pass, Clark said, was the product of a series of unfortunate incidents and bad timing. “The inspector came in at lunch hour, which caused him to witness a lot of things that [were] still in the process of completion.”
He cited the issue concerning the kitchen’s ceiling as an example, explaining that there was a “water leak on the system the day before the inspection and when the inspector came, facilities management were still finishing their work.”
Despite the gravity of the incident, Customer Service Manager Alexander Gemitti believed that Rex’s Den had benefited from the experience.
“It certainly contributed in bettering the way we serve our customers — we are taking what we have learned from our inspections and incorporating them in our system.”
Gemitti said that every employee, old or new, is always in constant training and that checklists have been put in place to ensure that everyone is performing their tasks properly and up to par with the restaurant’s new standards.
Clark also added that ever since the inspection, it has been stressed that “a task doesn’t end with food preparation and is only completed when [each staff has] cleaned everything and put away [cutlery] and foods in their proper stacks.”
Some students, however, like frequent Rex’s Den patron Morgaine Craven, are still wary about the implications of the conditional pass. “Even with these improvements in place I am still concerned about the restaurant’s issues regarding contamination.”
She believes that standards concerning food, once set, should never be broken. Craven is worried that “the practises that were fixed directly after the inspection will once again be committed in the near future.”
Rex’s Den has undergone a total of four inspections since 2009 and received passing results in three of these inspections.
