Restaurant sanitation ratings- what's low enough to give you pause?

[ged]

I don't prefer it, but I'm pretty comfortable eating at restaurants with B ratings. I think I've even eaten at a C rated restaurant before - but that one did give me pause and I don't plan to eat at a C rated restaurant ever again.

[JustMe]

Okay, I have been clueless about this . Where in restaurants are these ratings posted or how to I find them ?

[Kestrel]

Where I live, they are posted on the county's health department website.

[carolinacool]

In North Carolina, they have to be posted where customers can easily see them. So by the counter, hostess stand, an obvious wall, etc.

I waited tables my senior year of college at a sports-type restaurant near campus. I remember two things that we got dings on when we had our inspection: one was having a hand soap dispenser over a sink that was reserved for washing pots and pans. No one ever washed their hands over there, and I’m not sure I even realized there was a soap dispenser there until after the inspection. The other was we had a 5 gallon bucket of pickles sitting directly on the floor. Our manager found some box to sit on to get it off of the floor. But always made me chuckle was that that was their main concern and not the fact that the wait staff would stick our bare hands in the bucket to grab pickles to throw on plates on the way to the front of the house. Lol

[carolinacool]

Double post. Why has this gotten so bad again?

[klwa]

I've been told by multiple people who work in kitchens here that if you see a restaurant that keeps a B, to stay away. Hitting a B once isn't as bad, because it may have been a crap day, but not bringing it back up is a problem.

That said, I have bought pizza from a place that had a C rating one time. We went there pretty frequently, and I ordered over the phone. When I picked it up, I saw the rating on my way out the door. Yeah... I told DH & our friends what the situation was and fixed myself a sandwich. They ate it & were fine, but I couldn't bring myself to eat that one. The place closed about 6 months later and I don't think they ever brought the rating up...