Food

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Inspectors temporarily shut down Chinese restaurant Cravings in February after the Campustown establishment failed its fourth straight public health inspection.

Cravings, 603 S. Wright St., Champaign, was one of nine eateries to fail a February inspection by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. (See the complete list of February inspection failures below.) Restaurants fail when they score 35 or lower on the district’s 100-point scale. The inspections are conducted on a routine basis because poor sanitary conditions can lead to food-borne illnesses.

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- The list of seven Champaign County restaurants that failed public health inspections in January features a mix of new and familiar names.

One of the familiar names was Garcia’s Pizza in a Pan, 313 N. Mattis Ave., Champaign.

The pizzeria received a score of 23 out of 100 on its Jan. 24 inspection. Eateries fail inspections when they score 35 or lower. It was the fifth time that Garcia's failed an inspection in the past five years, but it was the first failure since September 2009.

By Dan Petrella/CU-CitizenAccess -- Only two Champaign County restaurants failed public health inspections in December, the fewest in any month since June.

Maize Mexican Grill, 60 E. Green St., and The Clark Bar, 207 W. Clark St., both in Champaign, failed after inspectors from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District gave them each a score lower than 36 out of 100.

Located in a small building on the northwest corner of First and Green streets that once housed Ye Olde Donut Shop and, more recently, the short-lived Derald’s Diner, Maize Mexican Grill opened this fall after receiving its health permit in September, according to the health district’s website.

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.