Health Inspection

-Greg Koppell

When eating at your favorite restaurant, do you ever consider how it has scored on health inspections? If you are like me, a restaurant’s health standards are something that you take for granted and are not a factor you would ordinarily take into consideration before choosing where to eat. You may, however, be interested to know which restaurants around Westlake have received high health scores and which have received low scores.
    
Health inspections are an important way to make sure that restaurants maintain the accepted standards of health and sanitation. Most food enterprises are inspected about once every six months.
   
“The registered sanitarian arrives and introduces himself/herself and audits the operations by asking many questions, taking lots of temperatures of the food, walking through and watching the staff as they work,” said Mark Parsons, an employee of the Austin Health and Human Services Department. “Critical violations result in a demerit and the total demerits are deducted from 100 to get the score.”
   
The overall health scores for restaurants in Westlake Hills seem to be pretty good, with only four locations scoring below a 70 on inspections earlier in 2007. Those lower scoring restaurants include Thai Spice, La Madeleine, Thai Kitchen, and Westlake Grocery. Each of them, however, brought its score up at a later inspection to above a 70. At the other end of the scale Chipotle, Jamba Juice and Starbuck’s scored a perfect 100 on certain inspections last year, with no health violations at all.
   
So, now that you have this information, will it influence your decision of where to eat out?

“While I don’t pay much attention to the health scores of restaurants, if I knew that a certain restaurant had low scores, I would probably be less willing to eat there,” sophomore Divya Kathuria said.

Below are scores for the most recent inspections of popular Westlake eateries:

Restaurant Name	Address	Inspection Date	Score
Starbuck’s	3300 Bee Caves	11/13/07	100
Jamba Juice	3300 Bee Caves	12/07/07	97
McDonald’s	3300 Bee Caves	11/16/07	97
Chick-Fil-A	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	10/29/07	97
Quizno’s Subs	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	12/27/07	93
Chipotle	3300 Bee Caves	12/07/07	88
Texas Honey Ham	3738 Bee Caves	11/07/07	88
Gelato’s	3300 Bee Caves	11/13/07	86
Popeye’s Chicken	3652 Bee Caves	12/05/07	81
Marye’s Gourmet Pizza	3663 Bee Caves	10/25/07	78
Hangtown Greill	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	11/13/07	76
Thai Kitchen	3437 Bee Caves	10/29/07	75
La Madeleine	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	8/14/07	75
Chinatown	3300 Bee Caves	10/05/07	73
La Salsa	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	12/27/07	73
Thai Spice	701 S. Capital of Texas Highway	11/19/07	72