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DIRTY DINING: Moldy food at the Cutting Board

Posted at 10:45 PM, Apr 19, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-20 02:30:25-04

It's a tie this week for the dirtiest dining so you'll be getting a double dose both Wednesday and Thursday.

In the first installment, Darcy Spears visits a restaurant where health inspectors called some of the food "unfit for human consumption."

Open for less than a year, Cutting Board Filipino Gastropub on Rock Springs Drive near Lake Mead Boulevard and U.S. 95 has already gotten a heaping helping of demerits from the Health District -- 39 demerits and a C grade.

PHOTOS: Dirty Dining April 19, 2017

Managing Partner Barry Picazo says health inspectors caught them off guard.

"This experience is very enlightening," he said.

Health inspectors found a menu full of mold at Cutting Board.

"It was mostly on the produce," Picazo said. "So you just really have to pick them out."

It wasn't picked out of the tomatoes. In fact, the moldy stuff was chopped up and put into the mix in the make table. 

And, there were multiple other foods inspectors called "unwholesome" and "unfit for human consumption," including moldy red potatoes, "adulterated" mint leaves in the bar cooler and fuzzy squash in the walk-in.

They put the moldy food in the trash after inspectors found it. 

Same with a lot of expired food including two-week-old cooked meat, fried fish skins that were more than a month old, two containers of heavy cream that had expired three weeks before and five bags of fresh sprouts that were up to a week past their "Best by" date.

"When we labeled the containers, they didn't remove the old sticker," Picazo said.

He admits some things were definitely expired, but says they were never served.

Now why would it take the health inspector coming in to get those issues addressed?

"Well, it's just that, um, we'd been, it was busy," Picazo said.

They also had to throw out multiple foods in the temperature danger zone including fried whole chickens, stuffed pork, cooked beef and racks of ribs. 

Even more hazardous? A cook using a prep table to chop raw beef, then produce without washing it in between.

That can be very dangerous as far as foodborne illness. Is that a training issue?

"Yeah, training issue. And they've all been trained properly now," Picazo said.

Inspectors also found bugs throughout the facility in the dining area as well as the kitchen.

"Fruit flies," Picazo said. "That's been addressed."

By bleaching the drains, he says.

There was also a large container of raw pork stored on floor, excessive food debris in the microwave and on ventilation hoods. 

Plus... pink slime in the ice machine.

"It's just that we've only been here less than a year and that ice machine was cleaned before we took over," Picazo said.

He says it's now undergone a deep cleaning, and Picazo has a parting message for the public.

"Just want to reassure my guests, everything's been addressed."

Cutting Board now has a five-demerit A grade. 

On Thursday night on 13 Action News, this week's second 39-demerit C grade where forgery results in serious scrutiny and near shutdown.