Food

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Despite promises over the past four years to post restaurant inspection reports online, the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District will miss another self-imposed deadline to do so.

Because of ongoing “computer glitches,” district officials said they would fail to post the restaurant inspection reports online in January. They set that goal earlier this year in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess.org for a story on restaurants that failed inspections and after promising since 2008 to make the information more easily available to the dining public.

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Eight restaurants in Champaign County failed public health inspections in October, according to new records obtained by CU-CitizenAccess.

Among the failures was Geovanti's Bar & Grill, 401 E. Green St., Champaign. The Campustown restaurant scored 31 out of 100 on its Oct. 20 inspection by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.

The failed inspection was Geovanti's sixth since September 2008, the most of any eatery in the county.

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- When public health officials conducted a routine inspection of Quiznos in Urbana last month, they discovered 12 critical health-code violations.

They included a “bag of brown lettuce found soaking in liquid in [the] walk-in cooler;” vegetables, cheese and salad dressings stored at improper temperatures; and employees cleaning cutting boards and knives without a proper sanitizer. When inspection was finished Quiznos had scored a negative 22 on the district’s 100-point grading scale.

As a result, inspectors from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District suspended Quiznos health permit on Sept. 26 and temporarily closed the restaurant at 114 N. Vine St.

By Julie Wurth/The News-Gazette -- One in five children in Champaign County doesn't have enough food, and many of them are not eligible for subsidized school lunches or other federal food assistance, hunger experts say.

The numbers come from a "food insecurity" study originally published last spring by Feeding America, a national hunger-relief organization, and updated recently by Craig Gundersen, associate professor in the University of Illinois Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.

See CU-CitizenAccess.org's coverage of the 5th Annual Hunger Symposium in Central Illinois, as reported by Landon Cassman.

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Over the past four years, health inspectors failed one of out 10 restaurants, but the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District has never informed the public of those failures.

Do You Know How Your Favorite Restaurants Fare in Public Health Inspections? from Illinois Public Media on Vimeo.