PUBLISHER’S PAGE

Receiving phone calls from irate restaurant owners is a part of my life. Every month they come in, usually in numbers remarkably close to the number of unfavorable reviews published in the last issue. The owners argue, they flatter, they coax, they demand. They make outrageous claims and even more outrageous accusations. They hit on the competition, damning theirs and praising mine. They make dark references to bribery, never actually suggesting that the magazine is on the take, but wondering innocently how they can possibly survive when others are practicing “politics” in obscure plots to drive them out of business. They send hate mail, written by the same hand but on different kinds of stationery. They send presents and then call to ask for appointments. They try enthusiastic announcements, sure that their newest theme is unique and that it will therefore ignite excitement in the editorial heart.

Restaurant owners are sales people. (I know, my wife is one.) Outside the kitchen, they are not objective. A restaurant owner will fume and squawk at a cook for scorching a subtle cream soup, then march confidently into the dining room to proclaim it as one of the fine and rare accomplishments of the Western world.

Restaurant reviewers aren’t better, just different. To be a restaurant reviewer, one must enter a sort of priesthood. Suggest to a restaurant reviewer that he might tone down an offhanded comment, and you are reminded sharply of the battle between God and Mammon, and of the magazine’s obligations to the former. A restaurant reviewer elevates prejudice to a level of high principle. The serving of canned vegetables, which he eats daily at home, will – when he’s on duty – send him into a state of indignation bordering on apoplexy. The offending restaurant owner may explain to me, after he’s taken all the cans off the shelf and hidden them in the basement, that his asparagus is flown in daily by special charter from France. But it’s too late. The reviewer will never again enter the place without suspecting the vegetables. And I will never again be able to enter the place without being dragged back to the kitchen to inspect the canless shelves for myself. These laws of behavior are so immutable that no mere publisher has a chance at challenging them.

That’s the sort of thing that goes on in an average month. This month, however, we have a cover story on dirty restaurants. Before the phone calls begin, I want to consolidate my defenses.

This month we’ve moved from reviewing restaurants to reporting on them. The difference is vast. A review is an opinion, and nearly always open to disagreement – which is why it isn’t difficult to be sympathetic to a restaurant owner’s complaint about an unfavorable mention.

But reporting is a matter of facts, not opinions. We don’t do it because we think our readers might enjoy it: we do it because we think the city needs it. When the area of investigation includes subjects as potentially dangerous as food poisoning, we take the job of reporting very seriously.

Anticipating the questions that restaurant owners named in the article may have, I’d like to offer a few comments on how it was developed. It’s only fair that our readers share in the answers to those questions.

Why did you pick on me when nearly everybody has been cited for some violation? We didn’t pick on anybody. Reporter Janice Tomlin personally reviewed almost 3,000 inspection sheets and several hundred court citations. She selected restaurants to be used as examples on the basis of the seriousness of the violations for which they were cited and the editor’s judgement of the familiarity our readers might have with their names. A very prominent restaurant on Greenville, for example, has received a court citation this year for not keeping the lid of its outside trash container closed. While that’s an infraction of a city ordinance, it’s not likely to send anybody to the hospital, so we didn’t use it. On the other hand, a restaurant in South Dallas may have done something serious, but it’s unlikely that anybody has ever heard of the place, so it wasn’t an effective example.

Where did you get your information? Every item about a specific restaurant comes from the public record. When complaints were not made by public officials and not substantiated in the public record, we omitted the name of the restaurant. The two exceptions are Oz, which is now out of business, and Dos Gringos in Fort Worth, where a report of food poisoning was previously published in the local press.

Why weren’t any of your wife’s three restaurants named? Reporter Tomlin swore an oath to the managing editor that she painstakingly checked all three and they came up clean. The editors realize all too well that a conflict of interest exists. The best we can do is to be open about it, and allow the reader to judge our credibility for himself.

You named my restaurant because the timing of your article coincided with the period in which I happened to be cited for a violation. What about all the other restaurants that will be cited in the future, with nobody the wiser? The Environmental Health Department is finally converting to a computer system, which will enable them – and us – to track inspections much more easily than in the past. The editors are now discussing the possibility of a special insert in our dining guide that will list monthly the restaurants whose inspection scores fall below the minimum standard. The New York Times provides this service twice a week. Perhaps a Dallas newspaper will respond to the idea.

The only reason the suggestion of publishing names on a regular basis even comes up is that it might serve as an incentive for restaurant owners to comply with the law. Certainly, as Tomlin reports, they have very little other incentive. Violators are now fined little more than nominal amounts by the municipal courts (if you agree that a $27.50 fine for a restaurant grossing in the neighborhood of $5,000 a night is nominal). And the health department seems to consider itself almost a a service agency to the restaurant industry. Time and time again, Tomlin was told by inspectors that their job is to help restaurants meet health standards. That would be fine, if the department shut down places that didn’t respond to its fatherly advice. But since the department was reorganized in 1975 (records don’t reflect anything before that), only one of Dallas’ 2,654 restaurants has been forced to close by the health department.

There are hundreds of well-meaning, hard-working restaurant owners who comply with the law even though it isn’t strictly enforced, just because it is the law. There are hundreds of others who meet health standards and would even if it weren’t the law, because they care about their customers and have a great deal of pride in their kitchens.

Human nature being what it is. one can safely say there are hundreds more that need to be watched constantly and punished severely for serious health violations. That’s the job of the health department, and of the city’s judiciary. It is a job that Dallas could do better, and should.