How clean are the restaurants where you eat? Have you ever looked to see how clean it was and end up turning around and leaving because it just wasn't that clean? We have a local Waffle House, where we love to eat breakfast sometimes on weekends. When we first started going to this Waffle House, the Greeter was absolutely fantastic at helping the waitresses keep the tables cleaned up after people left and keeping the floor of the dining area swept up. Unfortunately, after he left, the "cleanliness" of the restaurant has gone downhill some. What we don't like doing, and have had to do lately, is ask the new Greeter to sweep the floor under the table. Actually, and to us it's stunning, we've seen folks sit down at a table where there was different food things on the floor under the table. What the floor looked like simply didn't bother the diners. Now, in nicer restaurants, like steakhouses, the clean-up person will wipe off table crap into a dish bin........not onto the floor. Don't know what grosses us out more, seeing food stuff under tables or seeing people sit down at those tables and never ask to have the floor swept under the table. Makes a person wonder how some folks live!!
All the restaurants I eat at are clean, don't go in the kitchens so don't know about that. Seldom eat at chain restaurants though and never in Fresno, usually by my daughter or son. Although when my ex lived here, we did eat out and I don't remember any places that weren't clean.
I've worked in a couple of restaurants, the first - put me off for life ! The second - Italian, had the kitchen 'in' the restaurant area, very clean
Waffle House has their cooking/dish washing area where all diners can see it. Sometimes there is some cooked waffle left on the sides of the waffle makers and that can look sort of gross. One Waffle House we use to go to (note: "use to go to"), didn't empty the trash in the cooking/dish washing area. It would be full-to--overflowing with trash. Didn't seem like anyone cared to empty it. Waffle House is a good restaurant, just badly managed. Like the waitress we always like, they need to get some caring people. Even when a restaurant gets busy, there should be one designated person to keep the floor clean and trash emptied.
Having been a health inspector, I can tell you that if the customer area is dirty, you absolutely don't want to see the kitchen. Since I worked in a small town and was single, I ate at most of these restaurants from time to time, so I wasn't particularly rough on them. I didn't do inspections during a peak period and when I came in, I would tell the owner that I was there for an inspection, but that I would like a cup of coffee first. Then, I would drink my coffee while filling out the pre-inspection portions of the forms, while the staff frantically tried to fix whatever might need fixing in the kitchen. Consequently, I didn't find anything horrible. Pre-prepared food was sometimes not kept at the right temperatures and, since it was southern Texas, there would sometimes be evidence of insects having been there, since that's something that's hard for them to get rid of quickly. I had to threaten to shut a sandwich place down because they refused to maintain their foods at a high enough temperature, arguing - probably reasonably - that it would dry up too quickly if it were maintained at so high a temperature. Of course, that wasn't something I could fix for them. I measured the temperatures - I didn't write the health code. The restaurant that I preferred to eat at was not on the high end of my inspection reports but the problems weren't dangerous or disgusting, in my opinion, and the food was better.