Contact 13
Dirty Dining: Tubs on floor, bug spray land Kaya Sushi on Dirty Dining list
Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- A local sushi bar proves that all-you-can-eat business model can be tough to manage. As they told Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears, that's what got them in trouble with the Southern Nevada Health District and landed them in the top spot of this week's Dirty Dining.
There was no dinner rush on Sept. 25 at Kaya Sushi on Spring Mountain near Arville because health inspectors shut the place down with 47 demerits. Because there was no room in the fridge, the restaurant decided to thaw three bus tubs full of fish on the floor.
"Sometimes we need to defrost quicker than we expect, so we leave it out here. We don't generally do that but on that certain day, we did leave it out here and now we're making sure that we don't do that again," explained Justin Paik, manager or Kaya Sushi.
As for keeping things cleaner than what pictures of the floors, walls and nozzles show, Justin said, "We weren't aware that this was such a big issue and now that they've told us, we've taken it into consideration and we're teaching all of our employees to be more clean and sanitary.
Inspectors found four different types of fish in the temperature danger zone. Also, soft shell crab, sushi rice and three types of meats on sticks were being held at room temperature.
"Because of our high rate of turnover, we usually have foods that are not quite in the refrigerated zone. Sometimes they fall into the danger zone," said Justin.
He says they've adjusted the fridge temperature so that won't happen again. We also asked why hand sink handles were caked with food debris.
"It was pretty messy. We overlooked that a few times," said Justin.
They had a shattered door panel in the sushi case that was held together with tape. That has now been fixed. Inspectors found a can of Raid under the prep table.
"This area has a few problems with insects once in a while, but we don't really have to deal with it, but just in case, we did leave it there for the occasional bug or two," said Justin.
Inspectors saw several flies in the facility, but no other creepy crawlies. Kaya Sushi hopes that will be the last time they run afoul of health inspectors.
"It was painful, but in the long run we learned a lot from it and we look forward to the Health Department coming in and next time leaving them with nothing to complain about, that's our goal," explained Justin.
Kaya Sushi was reinspected within 24 hours and reopened with an A grade.







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