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Health Dept. Gives Restaurant & Bar Workers More Rules, Takes Some Away
By
Garth Johnston
Published Dec 13, 2011
Modified Dec 13, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Dec 13, 2011
Modified Dec 13, 2011
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The rules for restaurants and bars, they are a changing. As the Times notes, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene today is set to approve a number of changes to Article 81 of the city's Health Code, the document that governs sanitation rules for food-service establishments (you can see the whole thing right here in this pdf). Finally, bartenders won't have to wear hair nets! Because, yeah, even if they so much as handled a lime they were supposed to. Now they tell us!
The rewritten article 81 is chock full of new phrases (finally, the city recognizes "frozen desserts!") but also does away with outdated rules and regulations. Not just no more hair nets for bartenders and coffee baristas, but also whole sections about things like slaughtering of animals (which is fully regulated by the feds). The new Article 81 also finally recognizes that there is a difference between food prepared for a restaurant setting and food prepared for a to-go setting.
Another interesting change is an easement on requirements for dedicated food sinks in washing pre-foods (basically now instead of having one sink for washing restaurants can have one sink compartment for washing). And of course, there are some new restrictions to keep every restaurant from getting an easy A. Like, the one that says that utensils used for dispensing food must be kept with the handle extended out of the food. Or the one that says that straws must be offered to consumers "completely enclosed in a wrapper or dispensed form a sanitary device."
Oh, and also? If the rules pass as expected there is no longer any question: "Spitting anywhere in the establishment is prohibited." Just in case you forgot.
Tagged
department of health
doh
food rules
restaurants
Garth Johnston
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