A friend of mine had a nasty case of food poisoning earlier this year. So nasty that Washington state health department folks were calling to check on her.
Update 1: Sarah Schacht (@sarahschacht) alerted me to this challenge when she was sick back in March. She did a lot of research on how other cities are making their inspection reports easier to use, even making it possible to integrate the information with Yelp reviews. KING5 did a story on her advocacy that runs at 10 and 11 pm on Thursday May 16. I’ll link to the story if KING5 puts the video online.
Update 2: Thanks to Dinegerous, I discovered that I should have searched for KFC and thus that the facility has a history (3 of the past 6 inspections) of failing to maintain hot holding temperatures for food.
That’s when I learned that King County restaurant inspection reports may be inaccessible to the average consumer because restaurant name and business name might not match. Guess which one you need to know to access the inspection report in King County? Then once you find it, can you decipher it?
Fast forward to this past weekend, when I found myself down for the count with fever and chills within four or so hours of eating at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kirkland, one that I patronize almost every time that I teach a motorcycle safety class. (Because I’m not a morning person, I choose not to get up early enough to make a lunch. Instead, I dash over for three fried chicken strips and a biscuit; I am, after all, a Georgia girl.)
