Ethnic restaurants hit cultural barriers

26 June, 2004
 

SUSHI: Can Liu prepares sushi last week at Kyoto, a Reno Japanese restaurant. Kyoto scores high on its health inspection reports.

With the bustle of the lunch crowd finally grinding to a halt, owner Dorothy Ishigooka of Kyoto Restaurant sits down to enjoy a brief respite while her facility closes for a few hours in the middle of the day.

Even with the restaurant closed, Ishigooka and her staff are still working. The afternoon break isn’t only for giving restaurant workers an opportunity to catch their breath. It also helps ensure that everything in the facility is in order.

“One reason we close in the middle of the day is so we can stop while we clean the restaurant, and we do that every day,” Ishigooka said. “We used to be open all day, but sometimes the customers would get mad when we tried to clean the restaurant (while we were open).”

The daily midday clean up, coupled with major cleaning on Saturdays, seem to be working. In the last three years, Kyoto has scored 97, 98 and 98 in its inspections - high marks among Asian restaurants, which have the lowest average inspection scores for Washoe County food establishments examined in a Gazette-Journal computer-assisted analysis.

In looking at restaurant categories that have had more than 200 total inspections between 1998 and 2004 in Washoe County, the Reno Gazette-Journal found that 92 out of 280 Asian restaurant inspections — 33 percent — scored below 90 on their annual surprise inspections. Coming in second are Mexican restaurants, which had 39 out of 219 restaurant inspections scoring below 90, a rate of about 18 percent. Asian restaurants also had the lowest average score at 90.6. Mexican restaurants came in second, with an average score of 93.3.

For many who work in the field, seeing such figures isn’t necessarily unusual. For one, their diverse cultural background alone can pose a challenge for ethnic establishments trying to operate within what can be completely foreign standards for many.

“Sometimes, we’ll hear ‘Well, this is the way we did it back home so why can’t we do it here?’” said Alan Dreher, who supervises the Washoe County District Health Department food program. “Maybe we just have a weaker bunch of people here (in the United States); we’re used to health issues being prevented.”

Cultural divide

The extent of a restaurateur’s culture shock can vary depending on where they’re from. Joseph Wong, co-owner of Palais De Jade, said one factor is how developed your home region is. Wong came from Hong Kong and finished his studies in Japan, and he said that is the main reason why it was easy for him to adapt to the food safety regulations in the United States.

Abel Del Real, co-owner of El Adobe Café and Mexican Restaurant, agreed that some ethnic restaurateurs come with better preparation than others. Bigger Mexican cities may have food inspectors but smaller localities may not, he said.

The most common culture-related problems inspectors see in ethnic restaurants involve food preparation, said Bryan Wagner, a public health environmentalist with the Washoe District Health Department’s food program.

“(Some operators) like to leave food out for a while,” Wagner said. “Even though they say they’re not leaving out the food too long, I understand what they’re saying but the regulations require that such food should be kept cold.”

Then there are differences among the ethnicities themselves. Some inspectors noted that housekeeping tends to be more of a problem for Chinese restaurants than for Japanese restaurants, particularly with grease. In Washoe County, Chinese restaurants had an average score of 90.5 based on 175 initial inspections from the Gazette-Journal database. Japanese restaurants — including sushi places — had an average score of 91.3 based on 39 initial inspections. Thai restaurants had the highest average score at 95.9 out of 27 initial inspections. It is important to note that since other Asian categories had significantly fewer inspections compared to Chinese restaurants, their averages are more easily affected by a very low or high score.

The style of Asian cuisine is another key factor, Wong said.

“One of the things with grease is that Chinese restaurants use more oil than Japanese restaurants,” Wong said.

“Take sushi, for example — you hardly use any oil for that. So Japanese restaurants usually don’t have the same exhaust system-related problems (that you see in some Chinese restaurants),” Wong said.

Conscientious operators, though, know their weaknesses and adapt accordingly, Wong said. His restaurant, for example, uses a good exhaust system and doesn’t have the same greasy smell you may find in other Chinese establishments, he said.

And while Japanese restaurants may not have the same problems with grease, they have to deal with their own challenges. Several area sushi restaurants, for example, have lost points for improper handling of raw ingredients. And unlike Chinese cooking, which uses mostly high heat, you can’t cook out pathogens when you’re dealing with raw fish, Ishigooka said.

The fact that Kyotoserves deep-fried foods such as tempura and barbecue items as well as sushi makes the restaurant’s high scores even more remarkable, given how high-temperature cooking account for the bulk of the problems in Asian facilities. Asked for her secret, Ishigooka was hard-pressed to come up with specifics; she developed cleaning measures out of habit over the years.

The good news is that the average score of Asian restaurants examined in the Gazette-Journal study have been improving annually.

In 2000, the average score of Asian restaurants was 89.6; grades gradually inched up each year after that, topping off at 91.2 in 2003. The average grade for Asian restaurants is hovering at 91 for 2004.

Some people — including inspectors —warn that it’s not a good idea to summarily indict one of group of restaurants as being less hygienic than others. That would be unfair to establishments within those groups that are doing a good job.

“I think the more important question is, ‘Is everyone being trained in the same fashion?’” said Steve Goode, environmental health manager with Clark County Health District. “And even if all food handlers are being trained in the same fashion, they’re all at different learning levels, just like the rest of the population.”

Sometimes, culture may not have anything to do with problems in ethnic restaurants. Dirty floors and cracking walls can easily be a problem in Italian, American and non-ethnic establishments, too, Wong said. Economics and not culture may actually be the key factor when it comes to the real and perceived hygiene discrepancies in restaurants.

“A lot of Asians or other newcomers to the country normally don’t have that much cash,” Wong said. “They may not be able to afford the fancy equipment so they buy something old or used and … that might give the wrong impression for some Americans who think a place looks dirty.”

Others may just simply cut corners as far as cleaning supplies or replacing old surfaces and fixtures in an effort to save money, he added.

A universal concept?

Perceptions of hygiene also vary. Ashley Wong, owner of Twin Dragon in Sparks, thinks some consumers can nit-pick while being oblivious to other things that are more pressing.

“I’m not perfect, and nobody’s perfect. But sometimes I’ll have customers come in and complain about a little stain on my restaurant’s door,” Wong said. “But then I visit their house and they have cats, dogs and even pigs. I’m like, how can you complain about a little stain when you have pigs living with you?”

At the same time, using culture as an excuse can only go so far. Dustin Boothe, an environmental health specialist with the Carson City Health Department, says that good food safety practice basically boils down to having good management.

“In every culture, you talk to a health educator from Asia or Mexico and they’ll tell you that the No. 1 way to stop the spreading of diseases is hand washing,” Boothe said. “You hear about the street markets over there … but now you also have food police in places like China making sure everything’s permitted because of all the tourists they get.

“So they’re changing their ways and educating people. Some may use culture as an excuse but it sometimes boils down to ignorance or just not wanting to do it.”

Even ethnic operators concur that culture should not be an excuse. Regardless where you’re from, the key concepts of cleanliness should be common sense, they said.

“When I was taking the (food safety) test, a lot of the things I saw were basic things that people should know,” Ashley Wong said. “It really doesn’t matter where you’re from. If something needs to be clean, it needs to be clean.”

Clear communication is also important. If a restaurant operator doesn’t understand what an inspector is saying, all the education in the world becomes moot. Concerns about communication can be seen from Washoe County to Los Angeles County and all the way to New York City.

“The literacy rate in the food industry is extremely low,” said Terrance Powell, ombudsman of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ environmental health division. “So you really have to work hard at overcoming that aspect.”

Powell has seen firsthand how much of a challenge communication can be, especially when you have situations such as a Turkish inspector explaining regulations to a Chinese operator. As a result, Los Angeles teaches and prints its materials in seven languages. Washoe County also offers its test in other languages, and food safety tests can be given orally in different languages as well.

And while people from different cultures have to adapt to American standards, sometimes the American system adapts to the vagaries of different cultures.

In Los Angeles County, for example, the health department had to make its statutes flexible enough to allow vinegared rice, a key ingredient for Japanese cooking, Powell said.

Acidified rice was consider potentially hazardous, but the health department ended up working with the Japanese restaurant association to demonstrate the safety of sushi rice; eventually, both agreed on a food safety plan.

“I think it’s important to listen to what (ethnic restaurateurs) have to say because they bring issues to us that are germane to what we do in common,” Powell said. “We can address concerns as to what’s working in terms of our inspections and also come up with new trends as far as how food is prepared.

“There is an atmosphere of open dialogue and I think that’s important.”