Contact 13

Dirty Dining: Ganesha Center Cafe

CREATED Dec. 5, 2012

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  • Spiritual growth, holistic healing and Dirty Dining. That's what's on the menu in this week's restaurant report. Video by ktnv.com

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Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- Spiritual growth, holistic healing and Dirty Dining. That's what's on the menu in this week's restaurant report.

As Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears explains, "old" and "moldy" are the words of the day.

This cafe on East Warm Springs isn't your typical dirty dining establishment.

It's part of Ganesha Center, which was founded as a sanctuary for the spirit after a near-death experience awakened the owner to her true life path.

In addition to a happy hour, they offer vibrational healing, meditation reiki, yoga and spiritual growth.

But it's a growth of a different kind that caught health inspectors' attention.

The cafe narrowly avoided closure with a 38-demerit "C" grade.

Ganesha Center's logo is the Hindu god Ganesha, which has an elephant head.

Some cheese inspectors photographed looked like elephant skin... Really moldy elephant skin.

"The picture the health department took... it's just nasty.  It looks like moldy elephant skin was growing on top of that and it didn't look like something that would have happened overnight," Spears said to Chef Pat Marcy.

Chef Marcy says he didn't even know that stuff was in his fridge.

"There's no tolerance for contaminated food, food that's not right, outdated food.  If I would have saw that, it gets disposed of."

Inspectors found plenty of outdated food.

Whipping cream had expired ten days before.

The milk was six days past its expiration date.

The soy milk may be great with cereal, as the label says... But not if it's almost a month old. The stuff at Ganesha Center had expired before Halloween.

"It sometimes gets pushed to the back, and that's on us," Chef Marcy admitted.

Inspectors also found ham and chicken salad that were both a week old, and spore growth on the jalapenos.

"I'm not trying to be obstinate, but it wasn't actually spore growth," Chef Marcy said.  "It was olive oil mixed in with the jalapenos, which puts a glaze on it."

Pat says he contested it with the Health District, but doesn't want to argue with them about it.

"Everything has been rectified within an hour of when this came up."

Inspectors say cold tomatoes, tzatziki sauce and bean sprouts were at unsafe temperatures and several prepared foods weren't date labeled.

There was food debris on a clean bowl, the slicer had some dried food on it, and some of the to-go containers were dirty.

They were also thawing hummus in a handsink.

And how 'bout a little Windex with your cous-cous? That's a storage no-no.

Pat says he's been at this for 25 years, and takes the bad inspection personally.

"I don't like walking in in the morning and seeing that "C" up there.  We take cleanliness seriously.  We take our business seriously and we take pride in what we put out.  So that hurts."

Ganesha Center Cafe has still not been reinspected.  The chef said that's the center owner's responsibility.

So for now, they're still sporting that "C" grade.