A Serious Case of Brooklyn Food Nasties

We stray from heavy items about neighborhood development and such for a moment to note that there have been a couple of recent posts over at Daily Heights and Daily Slope about gross and nasty conditions at a Key Food and at the Pavillion Park Slope movie theater (which is rumored again to possibly be closing). These entries got Gowanus Lounge to thinking about the NYC Health Department online database of restaurant inspections results, and to taking a look through them. (They are both illuminating and the best argument you will find for staying at home and cooking. Every meal. Forever.)

By doing this, we discovered that Tuk Tuk on Smith Street recently scored one of the nastiest ratings from the Health Department in all of Brooklyn. We take no pleasure in saying this, even though we haven't been to Tuk Tuk in a while.

More about that in a moment. First, from Daily Slope, some disgusting info about the Pavillion, from someone that worked there (granted it's only a movie theater, but still, it's too icky to pass up):

For some reason unknown to me, there were pigeons living in the stock room. Ask yourself this: If you were the manager, and you found small holes bitten in to a sack of popcorn seeds, would you throw out the whole sack? The first time I met the exterminator I was glad when he left the theatre empty handed, until the next time he showed up and removed a garbage bag filled with dead rodents. Believe me, there are worse things to worry about than small screens at the Pavilion.

Over at Daily Heights, meanwhile, there's this review of the Key Food on Washington from someone who slipped on some slime on the floor:

The freezer isn’t working at all, so be wary of their frozen foods until they get it fixed (and, presumably, until any of the food that’s in there right now is all gone). I reached in and the air inside was downright muggy, and the package of “frozen” shrimp I picked up (and quickly put back down) felt like it was full of warm liver.
Gross. I’m calling FreshDirect next time.

Now, about the Health Department database, which is a gem, because you can sort by borough or zip code or simply look up your favorite eatery. Try it for, say, Park Slope or Carroll Gardens. Or, even better, check out the listings by violation points (the higher the number, the more things you don't want to know about). By doing this, for instance, we found that Tuk Tuk, the Thai eatery on Smith Street, snagged a monstrous 87 points (one of the highest totals in all of New York City) on May 23. (The average restaurant in New York scores 13. When you hit 28 they start giving you a hard time. When you get into the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s it's time to say your prayers and think about finding a new favorite place.) A score of 87 points is not a bunch of pesky technical violations. The Dept. of Health nailed Tuk Tuk on 15 different counts from evidence of mice to the old standby of food being stored at unsafe temperatures. Yes, the violations are probably all corrected, still...

Have a gander, the odds are your favorite eatery has not faired well at some point in the last 24 or so months. You can always take comfort, we suppose, in the hope they've turned over a new leaf since the Health Department came around.