If you own a restaurant or cafe, then you know that your customers deserve only the best. That means quality ingredients, tasty food, great service, and… a clean kitchen. Unfortunately, not all business owners reach even the most basic hygiene standards, whether due to mismanagement or their attempts to cut costs.
In a recent AskReddit thread, a bunch of health inspectors opened up about the very worst, most disgusting restaurants that they’ve ever had the displeasure of evaluating. Scroll down for their horror stories. It’s serious nightmare fuel.
Bored Panda reached out to the author of the interesting discussion, u/Lightningstar39, and they were kind enough to share their thoughts about everything. Scroll down for our interview with them.
A note of warning: some of these tales are quite vivid and detailed; you may want to skip over some of them if you’re particularly sensitive or if you’re eating something right now.
#1
Actual inspector here. enter: newly permitted and built vietnamese seafood restaurant. i went in there and spent about 12 hours in there watching (and trying my hardest to correct) almost every violation known to man.
these guys were importing live fish from who knows where (customs was involved) and cooking it up like it’s no ones business. no coolers worked, no cooking was at the right temperature, everything was stored literally everywhere (food and live animals on floor, raw over ready to eat, etc). dish machine? sanitizing? what’s all that? the guy was tasting some soup and quite literally spitting it back into the pot. no one had on hairnets or gloves or shoes for that matter.
safe to say they got like a 20/100 the first time i was in there, we did 7 subsequent followups and their highest grade ended up being like a 40 something. they got their permit revoked (and we had to take them to court because they kept wanting to operate… and subsequently got some people sick).
Image credits: yolofreak109
Bored Panda was curious to get the author's take on why some restaurant owners, managers, and staff members might have such a hard time maintaining clean premises.
"To be honest with you, I think the most plausible reason would just be focus," u/Lightningstar39 told us.
"Keeping things clean can often be hard, and I don’t mean the act of cleaning itself but I mean having to pay attention to when things get dirty whilst focusing on something else," they said.
"I particularly struggle with this as someone who’s on the autism spectrum. So, I imagine it’s much more difficult keeping things clean whilst focusing on trying to run a restaurant."
According to the redditor, they haven't eaten at enough bad restaurants to immediately point out any kinds of red flags indicating that a place is best avoided.
"The only memorable bad experience I’ve had with restaurants was one restaurant at a shopping mall near where I used to live. I remember ordering a calzone from there and biting into it to find out it was undercooked."
#2
Not a health inspector but I used to work at a sandwich shop next to a Chinese restaurant. During their annual inspection, a cockroach fell onto the clipboard the inspector was writing on.
Image credits: kp026
#3
I'm not an inspector. I deliver beer. The amount of disgusting walk-in coolers is actually shocking. I have no authority, so of course, all I can do is steer clear of these places. But holy f**k. It's jarring how disgusting some places are.
Image credits: Poodicky
We were also interested in understanding what inspired the author to spark the discussion online in the first place. "Honestly, it was really just a stroke of curiosity I had one day. Often, when I’m just quietly thinking to myself I get curious about random things and I like to post questions about those random things I get curious about on AskReddit," u/Lightningstar39 opened up to Bored Panda.
"For some reason, I was thinking about health inspectors and what they go through every day. I thought 'there has to be at least a few genuine health inspectors on Reddit, maybe I’ll get a few good responses if I post my question there.' I know it’s common for people on Reddit to claim themselves as professionals without actually being them, but I thought at least a few had to be real."
The author said that most of the answers they got were what they more or less expected. "But the one [story] I personally found the most disgusting is the story about the cockroach-infested sushi shop."
#4
My wife worked at a commercial kitchen repair company. The technicians took apart a steam table at a buffet and found mummified mouse corpses.
Image credits: JayyyyyBoogie
#5
Not inspector, but did restaurant consultation. I got sent to this restaurant and it just smelled funny. I pulled back the fridge, and there was literally piles of moldy food behind the fridge. I lifted up the cold line trays, and I could tell that no one had cleaned it in months. I forgot to mention that when I opened the ice machine, there was a THICK layer of mold. It was so thick that my brain stopped working when I looked at it; it activated my fight or flight.
Image credits: Admirable_Job_9453
#6
There was a Mexican restaurant that got shut down locally about 7-8 years ago. I checked their health inspection. They scored a 14/100.
I am friends with one of the inspectors, so I asked about it. He didn’t do the inspection, but it became a well known incident in his department. Lots of stuff out of temp, lots of things out of date, dishwasher not working, no hats/hairnets, no gloves, etc. He said they had a chip warming bin that was a large plastic container stuck inside a standing hot box. The plastic was melted into the box and the base was covered in mold, some kind of liquid, salt, broken chips, mouse droppings, and roach eggs. The inspector asked them to wash their hands and use gloves. They all went and dunked their hands into a shared bucket of standing room temperature water and dried them on their aprons before putting gloves on. Everything on the line temped over 50 degrees and the chef/manager dipped a chip in the salsa to taste, said it tasted fine, and then double dipped into the same container to prove that it wasn’t dangerous.
They got some citations and were given one follow up inspection a few days later. Their water heater was out on that visit, so the closed the restaurant with dozens more citations. It never reopened.
The joke with the health department was that “the restrooms were spotless.”.
Image credits: Pickle-Standard
The long and short of it is that health inspectors protect the public by ensuring that restaurants and other facilities follow health and safety rules and regulations. It’s a vital job without which more businesses would lower their standards and more customers would get ill after eating, leading to more health issues across society, and worse.
Technically, health inspectors don’t just work at restaurants. They can also visit hospitals, construction sites, water treatment plants, food sanitization companies, mines, etc.
According to Indeed, the most important qualities for health inspectors to have include problem-solving skills, analytical skills and communication skills. They also need to be good at time management and stress management, and be able to understand rules and regulations, as well as explain them to others in simple language.
#7
Not an inspector, but went to food safety training. The inspector-insructor told us about going to inspect a Chi-Chi's. Their sewer had backed up into the kitchen. Instead of closing the restaurant, the manager made the kitchen staff tie garbage bags on their legs and keep working. Oops. The inspector shut it down immediately, of course. They got a HUGE fine. I don't remember if there were any other repercussions.
Image credits: GumboQueen_7615
#8
Some restaurant near me got shut down because they had freshly severed goat heads in the refrigerator. They didn't serve goat.
Image credits: moose184
#9
My Mom used to be a health inspector. A bar had a bear chained outside and the owners would bring it inside to hangout with the patrons sometimes.
Image credits: SmogginCragg
What’s more, health inspectors must value honesty. They have to be as objective and unbiased as possible when inspecting facilities. They have to prioritize the public’s welfare above everything else. People’s health and lives are at stake here.
The restaurant staff, from the owners and managers to the cooks and servers, have to be on the same page when it comes to cleanliness. Proper hygiene should be a top priority. If someone falls ill due to improper food storage or unclean premises, not only are you ruining a person’s health, but you’re also putting the restaurant’s future in peril.
According to Zenchef, the kitchen staff must constantly check the temperature of the fridges, freezers, and cold rooms, to ensure food safety. Certain foods perish more quickly than others, so you have to be particularly careful when storing them, (e.g., fish, shellfish, raw meat, dairy products, and eggs).
#10
Actual inspector here- I was still a student when we got a complaint about a place, and the woman sent us a picture of her food which had a cockroach IN their piece of sushi.
Went to.the restaurant, and at first, didn't see anything for the first hour, but I ended up finding some dead ones under a dishwasher and then all of a sudden, I saw them EVERYWHERE. I looked up to see 3 of them swimming in a clear bin of flour. Saw a ton of them scuttle out from the table fridge when I opened in. Walked around their dining area and saw so many scuttling around the floor, with people actively eating there.
Sure enough, made them close, and went in the next day with pest control. Pest control guy said it was the worst case he's seen, and actually climbed up on their counters to get away from the sheer number that came out of the woodwork when he sprayed the place.
Created a plan with the owner and actually fixed them up really well. And then the placed burned down the next month. I still can't forget the smell and just coming eye to eye with a cockroach roaming around in flour.....
Oh ya and the one 24 hour restaurant that had walk in fridges full of mold and piled high with home depot gallon buckets of food. They said they went through one bucket an hour. I was there for nearly 5 hours that day and they didn't go through one.....we ended up having to.throw all of it out anyways since the state of that fridge was unacceptable and the smell.....
Needless to say I'm happy to be on a completely different team working with diseases rather that kitchens now...
Image credits: allydagator
#11
There was SLIME IN THE ICE MACHINE!
Image credits: Any-Mushroom-6094
#12
I used to work for a company that fixes kitchen equipment as a field service tech some time ago.
There were a bunch of disgusting restaurants that I had to service but the absolute worst was a Golden Corral with absolutely zero safety measures in place.
The floor was so greasy that you could slide from one end of the kitchen to the other, half of their fridges were broken, and cooked food was stored in the open on mobile metal tables.
But the worst was seeing a large stainless table next to the dishwasher with a large hole cut out in it where a trash can would normally be stored underneath. The problem was that somebody had taken the trash can out and left it by the dumpster, so the servers were still dumping food onto the floor and stacking dishes.
There was literally a pile of soggy food underneath leaking all over the floor and it was right in the main path that people took in and out of the kitchen, so they were tracking food and grease and god knows what all over the restaurant.
Image credits: Sado_Hedonist
You should never refreeze products that have been defrosted. Meanwhile, you should aim to defrost food in a fridge, not at room temperature. Furthermore, you shouldn’t freeze items that should be kept at above-freezing temperatures.
Restaurant staff should also keep raw and processed foods in different fridges, clean their worktops and utensils daily, avoid handling food with their hands, not place their personal items on work surfaces, and not put food containers on the floor of the kitchen.
Storage areas and worktops should be kept separate from dishwashing zones and garbage bins. And the premises should be kept meticulously clean to prevent pest contamination and mold growth. Naturally, all the staff should regularly wash their hands, wear clean clothes, and have hairnets and gloves to prevent contaminating the food.
#13
Former health inspector here (and current third party food safety auditor): A few things that come to mind:
1. Grocery store so infested with rodents that an entire group of them was living in the dairy cooler- you know there had to be a lot of them in the store if some were resorting to living in a cold room.
2. Chinese restaurant getting ready to open for lunch. I walked in and temped the items in the walk-in cooler- all were well above acceptable temperatures- cooler had broken down in the night and was no longer functioning. They wanted to serve the food anyway. I had to embargo the entire cooler worth of food and stood there as they filled trash bag after trash bag with meat and took it to the dumpster. As I was leaving the location, I drove around to the back and they had employees pulling it all out of the trash and dragging it back into the building. Had to stop them, make them return it to the dumpster and pour straight bleach all over the food to ensure it could not be used.
3. Restaurant so infested with cockroaches that when the manager greeted me at the host stand to take me to the kitchen, he had a roach crawl across his back right in front of me.
4. Observed people smoking in the kitchens and in meat departments of grocery stores. Also observed folks using chewing tobacco and keeping their spit cups on the food prep surfaces.
Most of the stuff we think is disgusting isn't necessarily what the general public would even notice. A lot revolves around handwashing- if you really watch someone during food production and see all the things they touch and then attempt to handle ready to eat foods, it's disgusting. People just don't even think about handwashing like they should.
I know I have a bunch more. I'll update as I think of it all.
Image credits: redneck_lezbo
#14
Worked in one I could never figure out how they were allowed to operate. Food was never stored, cooked, or thawed properly. Fish and chicken were just left out overnight in the counter to thaw. Hot sauces were poured in 20L Cambros and put in the fridge, no stirring or cooling or anything. No lids in the fridge, the shelves were coated in slime, except for the one shelf front-of-house was allowed to use when our two sauce and drink fridges died and I cleaned off our solitary shelf.
Owner thought pouring bleach everywhere cleaned things. The floor was grey-black and slimy. The leaking pipes behind the 50 year old dishwasher (with a broken heating element) made the wall soggy when you pushed on it.
When we found mold growing on food, the chefs just picked it off and handed it back. Cleaning the whole kitchen was the job of the solitary, untrained dishwasher. Chefs had a nap setup in the dry goods closet on top of the flour.
Image credits: Ryuaalba
#15
Not a health inspector, but worked at a restaurant that was barely skirting by on health inspections.
We had a big roach problem, but we did a good job keeping them out of the actual food, which I guess is the big thing they look for with health inspections.
The most egregious issue, though, was the time I was making milkshakes and accidentally cut my arm on the metal counter. Well, I didn't notice how bad the cut was until I saw blood in the ice cream tub. Being a responsible person, I go to throw the ice cream out when the manager interrupts me, saying I should go use the first aid kit and they'll take care of the ice cream.
Well, I come back to the same tub of ice cream returned to the freezer, but the blood scraped out of it. *They kept using the ice cream.*
Edit: I want to clarify that they scraped the blood out before continuing to use the ice cream. They did not serve my blood to people directly.
Image credits: Dougboard
What is the worst restaurant you’ve ever been to in terms of hygiene, dear Pandas? Have you ever worked as a health inspector or as part of a restaurant kitchen team? What was that like?
If you’d like to share your experiences and opinions, feel free to do so in the comments, at the bottom of this post.
#16
I am not a health inspector, but I rented and renovated a restaurant that had been closed by health authorities. They had built themselves a mezzanine in the storeroom and were living there. When we started dismantling it my ex lifted his side suddenly and I was showered on rat s**t.
The extraction tube was fully clogged with solid fat. When the technicians released one side to remove it, it was so heavy that it fell crashing through the ceiling and a flood of thick black oil started raining.
We also found pigeon remains by the sink as if someone had been catching and cooking them.
I've never eaten in a restaurant of that type of national cuisine in my country again.
Image credits: Four_beastlings
#17
3rd party inspector here. Generally the really bad restaurants know they’re in bad shape, know why it’s important, and just don’t care (or are corporate owned and have no agency at the store level except to tattle on themselves to the health departments, which I see a lot).
One of the things that sticks with me the most is when I inspected a chicken restaurant that was reusing the buckets from the concentrated dish soap to store raw chicken. They didn’t understand why it was an issue because 1, they were keeping the raw chicken at the proper temp (per them, it was actually 48°) & date labeling the buckets…2, they kept the buckets covered and off the floor of the (filthy) walk-in…3, they washed their still-gloved hands between unhooking the bucket/quickly rinsing it and handling the chicken and 4, if the soap is safe for dishes why isn’t it safe for the chicken? The location had a ton of other violations but they were all pretty “standard”. I will just never get over why they honestly thought reusing a concentrated chemical bucket was ok.
Also, they had tons of large clean Cambro’s in good condition they could have used instead.
Image credits: sheepthechicken
#18
Former health inspector. I’d have to list a top few contenders:
A restaurant which had old damp floors (because it was in an old apartment type building), where roaches crawled out from between the floorboards with each step. They voluntarily closed and had to put in new floors. They were also hoarding in the restaurant, which had hid copious mouse droppings from the owner.
A Vietnamese restaurant with roaches that was draining noodles in colanders on the floor. They also did not refrigerate meat during service.
A filthy food truck trying to open for lunch with no electricity, planning to sell meat and sides that were left unrefrigerated from the previous night.
Honestly there were lots of singular disgusting moments that became an issue where someone did not understand time and temperature rules, even if other things were ok.
#19
Walked into a Mexican restaurant one time and saw some lady soaking some tripe in a mop sink. Saw that and told them to throw all of it in the dumpster and bleach it in front of me. My boss had seen a restaurant defrosting raw shrimp in a mop sink with the mop draped over the faucet. My other co-worker had to work a foul odor complaint where this Chinese buffet was closed for about a week without utilities. He walked in and found the food was still in the buffet line. He said the stench was so rotten that he immediately threw up upon opening the door. The food was stewing in it's juices for a week in the Texas summer heat. Those are the worst ones that I can think of atm.
Edit: Thank you so much for the gold! Dreams can come true! Lol :).
Image credits: ohyourgodz
#20
My friend in school talked about how trash the place he works at is. He said stuff like if someone drops a slice of pizza, they'll pick it up and serve it to the next guy. They'll do this with all their food. The restaurant part is fancy, but the kitchen is a mess and nobody really cleans it.
How they're still in business? Well when the first health inspector comes, they'll fail and they have a certain amount of time to correct it. Then the supervisor of the inspectors comes, who is good friends with the restaurant owner. He passes the restaurant either way.
Image credits: WirelessTrees
#21
Not a health inspector but worked at a food place:
I picked up a case of wings to be dropped in the grease but when I took the lid off they smelled bad and then when I saw the blood at the bottom was a dark brown instead of a bright red I instantly started heading to the back to throw them out. My manager caught me on my way back there and said nothing was wrong with the wings, he sprayed water on them and put them in the grease, it was truly disgusting.
#22
We have an Indian place down the street that fails so bad every time they just keep changing the name and owners once a year. Real bad stuff is on the health inspection every time, too. None of the fridges kept to temp. Unlabeled, uncovered, undated, raw chicken kept on top of the fresh fruit. Roaches and mouse poop on stacked plates, dry stock, shelving, cabinets. One time, one of the comments was that they didn't have any cleaning rags or sanitizer on site.
#23
Not a health inspector but I worked at an ice cream shop when I was 15. My boss “found” a mini fridge in an abandoned closed down elderly home. There was still food in there, with cottage cheese that expired 3 years prior to me opening it.
She gave me two bottles of bleach and said “go to town”.
Now I pleaded with her not to keep the fridge not because I had to do the Charlie work on it; but because it was f*****g nasty even if we did get rid of the mold that was literally eating the interior of the fridge. I didn’t feel right putting food in there and selling that food to customers.
Cleaned it anyway and put it out on the floor but refused to put stuff in there; when people put stuff in it, I’d throw it away or move it (depending on what it was)
I also had to negotiate with my boss on how often she’d let me clean the frylator grease. I wanted to do it once a day but ended up only getting a “once a week” approval; which was better than “once a season” like she had been.
Image credits: anon
#24
Not the worst but never ate there after this...
First week in Canada I went into Popeyes as who doesn't like mashed potatoes. They were cleaning when I walked in and there was a guy with a pressurised hose blasting the floor and the water was spraying everywhere.
The fine mist of grim floor water could be seen coating the food waiting in the pass, the prep tables. Everywhere in that tiny space was just getting blasted with floor goop.
#25
Not a health inspector but had one tell me the place she was at before mine was the Chinese place down the street and they had bugs crawling out of the cold table lid. She made them take it outside and failed them. As she was leaving she saw them dragging it back in
They closed permanently not shortly after.
I’m assuming they didn’t get their license back
I heard the restaurant that took over the building spent a fortune just making the building up to code on top of the remodel for what they wanted.
