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Dirty Dining in Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) - If you haven't finished eating yet, you might want to put down the fork before reading this next story.

Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears has been digging in to health inspection reports and she's got important information that you'll want to have before you dig in to your next restaurant meal.

She gives us all something to chew on as she takes us on a tour of the restaurants that got the worst health inspections of the past year.

"We get to see some things that just make us scratch our head and shake it and it's dumbfounding," said Environmental Health Supervisor Greg Wears with the Southern Nevada Health District.

We begin our dirty dining tour at Los Compadres on East Charleston. They got 77 demerits.

Keep in mind any restaurant that gets more than 40 demerits on a health inspection is immediately closed.

Los Compadres was written up for things like moldy tomatoes; expired milk; old, dried food debris on drawers and can openers, and food out of the safe temperature range.

"It's 40 degrees or below for cold food. For hot holding it's 140 degrees or above and anything in between is called the danger zone," Wears explained.

Another violation the health inspector found was uncovered food, which can easily be contaminated.

"We're going to find everything covered in there, right?" Darcy Spears asked Los Compadres Owner Nuvia Incunca as they entered the restaurant's walk-in refrigerator.

"They should be," Incunca answered.

But, the menudo wasn't and that's a health violation.

"Should there be a cover on that?" Spears asked.

"Yeah," Incunca said, "there should be."

At least there wasn't any food in the mechanical room this time.

The health inspector found pork stored in the mechanical room in an open, dirty, cardboard box.

Ever wonder where that ice in your drink comes from? Los Compadres was storing ice in a garbage can.

"What should we tell people?" Spears asked.

"We trying to do best that we can to resolve all these kind of problems and so we invite everybody and say if we are wrong, we are open and say maybe we are wrong, we have to do something better," Incunca responded.

Our next stop is Kimchi restaurant on the Strip with 71 demerits.

The inspector found food debris, grease, dirt and dust throughout the facility on equipment surfaces, floors, walls, even ceilings.

"Dirt doesn't build up in one day. It takes time," Wears explained.

Would you want kitchen utensils to come out of greasy water?

Well, they did.We also saw a photo of rotten lemons.One is so moldy you can't even tell what it is. But one thing really takes the cake.

"I don't know what that person was thinking," Wears said.

He's referring to kitchen tongs an inspector found in the bathroom of all places, hanging on a plumbing pipe right next to an open toilet tank.

"Under a sink is beyond me," said Wears.

Of course, if you're going to store your tongs in the bathroom, why not place your fly swatter with the clean pots?

Kimchi was also written up for chemicals and medicine stored with food; black and brown slime accumulation inside the ice machine; a paint brush being used as a food utensil; and no tags on the shellfish, which the Health District says is very important because shellfish carry Hepatitis and officials have to be able to trace it to its origin if someone gets sick.

When we went to Kimchi restaurant for an explanation, Scott, the manager, tells us, "Actually, I cannot give you the answer and my owner doesn't want to do pictures or anything."

"Ok, so, officially no comment from you guys?" Spears asked.

"Yes," Scott answered.

A little further east, Kabob 'n' Curry on East Desert Inn was temporarily closed in September after receiving 66 demerits.

The inspector found ants in the condiments; a swollen can of evaporated milk still in use; chicken and beef stew that had to be tossed because it was too dangerous to serve; and ask yourself if you'd want to eat anything that was cooked on this stove.

"We want to see if we can talk to someone about what happened here and whether you guys have cleaned up your act," Spears said to a woman who peered out through the restaurant's chained front door.

The woman tells us to come back because she says the owner's not there. But we found she and her husband are the owners.

When we returned, neither of them were there, but employees called her on the restaurant's phone.

"When I gave you my card yesterday you told me that I could come back and talk to the owner, but apparently the owner is you," Spears said.

The Health District confirmed that. They even showed us a picture with the husband and wife sitting with the inspector on the day they were shut down.

She then tries another tactic: accusing us of trying to hurt her business.

"No one's trying to ruin a business," Spears assured her.  "It's about protecting public health and making sure that the public is informed about the places that they go to eat."

The last stop on our "worst of" list is Esmeralda's Cafe on E. Charleston with 68 demerits.

Their report documents things like expired milk...

"I had bought the milk the day before right next door, so, we didn't look at the date," explained Esmeralda's owner Daisy Vega.

Food in the splash zone of dirty dishes.

"That was negligence," Daisy admitted.

Pork and cheese at temperatures that promote bacterial growth.

"Can anybody die from that?" Vega asked.  "Can anybody die from any of these demerits that I have written down?"

"I don't think what they're looking for is whether someone's going to die in your restaurant, Spears responded.  "It's more what's a good standard of health and cleanliness and what presents a potential hazard."

Vega invites us to see how they've improved after taking a special class put on just for their employees by the Health District.

"Now we do things the right way," she said.

Maybe not always the right way. When we toured the kitchen, we find several things exposed to potential contamination.

But from everything else we see, it looks like Esmeralda's is a good example of how to learn from your mistakes.

Rounding out the bottom five list was Asia Buffet on the Strip. They got 59 demerits and subsequently closed their doors.

We should note that every restaurant in our story was re-inspected and upgraded to an A. You now know about the worst, so what about the best?

For a complete list of the cleanest places in 2009, just click here.

You can also check to see whether your favorite restaurant has been inspected this year, and how they fared by clicking here. Please note that if a restaurant received an A rating it does not need to be inspected again within that year.

You may be wondering how many people get sick from what they eat in Las Vegas. The Health District got 536 food borne illness complaints last year, 43 in December alone. That's more than one complaint every day of the year.