Photo: QueensPost
Jan. 3, 2011 By Christian Murray
Restaurant Azteca, located at 47-16 Greenpoint Ave., was shut down by the NYC Health Department for part of December, following poor inspection results.
The restaurant, also doing business as Palacio Azteca Restaurant, accrued 128 violation points – a score far higher than any other restaurant in Sunnyside for quite some time. Generally, 27 or less is deemed a passing score.
Some of the violations listed by the Health Depart., included:
1) Live roaches present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.
2) Filth flies or food/refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies.
3) Hand washing facility not provided in or near food preparation area and toilet room. Hot and cold running water at adequate pressure to enable cleanliness of employees not provided at facility. Soap and an acceptable hand-drying device not provided.
The restaurant has since reopened.
The owner of the restaurant, Bernardo Sosa, said: “There were roaches and I took care of them.” He added that this is the first time in 14 years he has been closed by the department.
But there is no reason that the restaurant can’t bounce back. Other restaurants that were closed by the Health Department, such as Dazies and Biryani House, have come back. Dazies was closed for a few days in November when it scored 38; that restaurant now has a score of 2. Meanwhile, Biriyani House, an Indian restaurant, which was closed after scoring 46, has a current score of 12.
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4 Comments
People have different standards. Over a decade ago, I was a Resident Director for campus dormitories in NJ (while working on my Ph.D). Overall, we kept the buildings as clean and clear of roaches as possible. After one graduate student and his family moved out, we went in the next day to prepare the apartment and discovered thousands of roaches crawling all over the place (no exaggeration). That kind of infestation doesn’t appear over night – so the family must have been living with them and never once complained – as if this was normal‼! To this day I’m still disgusted by the thought of their child sleeping in that place.
It’s like many of the local grocers here are infested with “filth” flies which get in your bags and on your clothes/hair and when you get home now you’ve got them in your apartment – and they multiply like crazy – takes days to eradicate them all. These places should be required by law to have multiple bug-zappers.
People have different standards. To some this is normal – to me – it’s gross! I’ve never seen this where I used to live 🙁
I went to one restaurant /bakery and I could see small roaches crawling and coming out of my takeout bag! Gross. But they do have patrons.
“There were roaches and I took care of them.”
The question that immediately springs to mind is why did it take being closed by the health department to “take care of them”? So it didn’t bother them that there were roaches crawling all over the food they were serving until now?!?
There are many places I won’t order from and this one is now on the list. I keep informed of both present and past DOH inspections from their website:
http://a816-restaurantinspection.nyc.gov/RestaurantInspection/SearchBrowse.do
Our Sunnyside restaurants need to be kept to a higher standard. Even an “A” restaurant can have several violations which I find disgusting.
By you updating our little town of all or important news. we know what is going on around here. restaruants that we can and should support and restaurnats that will make us sick.. We all have decisions to make but with so many eateries to chose from at least we are being educated . thanks sunnysdepost for the education