With all the Thanksgiving weekend eating behind us, it's time to go Dirty Dining.
Tonight, Contact 13's Darcy Spears gets an earful from restaurant owners who say the Health District has it in for them.
Fish and chips, Chinese food, Korean BBQ -- you'll find it all under one roof at USS Fish & Chips on Las Vegas Boulevard and Cheyenne.
But you'll also find a C grade and 36 demerits.
Darcy: Did you know we were going to come when that C grade went up?
Yong Cho: Channel 13!
Husband and wife Yong and Kwi Cho have been running Vegas restaurants for 28 years.
They say they know what they're doing. As for the Health District?
Yong: They don't know what is smart thing.
Darcy: They don't know what they're doing, you think?
Kwi: Yeah!
The inspector wrote them up for not using hair restraints, storing wood hot plates in the only hand sink, keeping sanitizer buckets on prep tables and not properly washing their hands.
"Busy time I go over there?" Yong says, gesturing to the hand sink in the back of the kitchen.
"Busy time all the time washing hands, touch one thing, washing hands -- that's crazy!" adds Kwi. "I say you go home same thing -- you do same thing?" she says she asked the health inspector.
When the inspector found raw meat thawing at room temperature on the condiment cart, Kwi told her thawing per the health regulations takes too long.
And when she got written up for leaving food out at unsafe temperatures during the inspection...
"Anything outside for cooking!" said Kwi. "What we gonna do? We can't put everything inside, outside, inside outside."
As for the Pepto Bismol kept handy in the kitchen...
Kwi: I eat that one for sick and pain.
Yong: Not for the customer!
Darcy: Right. They just didn't want to see it mixed in with the food.
The health report says Kwi admitted dumping dirty mop water in front of the restaurant.
Regulations require that chemically contaminated wastewater be disposed of into a sanitary sewer or septic system.
"Mop water I put in the toilet," Kwi said. "I put in the toilet. She asked me, I don't know how to do that. Maybe outside? Inside? I'm thinking it's maybe outside and she said no!"
Speaking of the toilet, the health inspector also had a problem with where the restroom is located. You have to walk through the kitchen and the storage area to get to a door labeled Office, but which is actually the only restroom in the restaurant for customers.
Kwi and Yong say it's been like that for 10 years and they don't understand why it's a problem now.
"People have no problem. We got to keep clean, you know? I do! Myself! Why she complain too much? I don't know why," said Kwi.
They've told the Health District to keep that inspector away from their restaurant and next time send a supervisor instead.
The imminent health hazard closure came at Soul Food Express Cafe.
It was shut down at the Food Truck Extravaganza after inspectors found sewage spilling from the truck onto the ground and into the surrounding area.
USS Fish & Chips still has a C grade.
Soul Food Express is back on the road with a zero-demerit A.
