I'm usually in Grinders at least once a week for an evening beer; sometimes 3-4 times in a week, and a group from work eats lunch there from time to time. I've never had bad service (Lacie and Shelly both consistently rock at night, in my experience) and only once about a year ago did I have bad food--the meatballs on the meatball grinder were just dry little hunks of inedible carbon. Other than that, I have almost all good things to say about the place. I do wish they'd kept the ever-growing men's room graffiti--come on my face you dragon slayer!
Anyway, if Grinders kitchen grosses you out you're probably better off cooking at home. I've seen a lot of kitchens and known a lot of cooks, and Grinders isn't that bad. At least you can see what the cooks are up to!
Moniker wrote:
My first horror story stems from my first visit. The cook used a wet rag that was sitting in a bucket of murky water to wipe down the preparation area. He also wiped his hands on the apron after handling raw food, then went to tossing dough for a pizza.
That was certainly a bucket of sanitizer. It might have looked murky, and usually you want to get fresh sanitizer when your bucket starts looking funky (especially if customers can see it), but it's not going to kill you.
Moniker wrote:
My second visit, a second cook did the same thing. He was handling raw food, pulled the cooked pizza out of the oven and brought our food to us without washing his hands. That isn't even to mention that the pizza was brushing up against his floured and freshly (glistening) stained apron.
This is a little disconcerting. What was the raw food? Raw meat? (Do they even have raw meat?) Normally they use a pizza peel and put the pie on a metal plate, so I'm not sure at what point he should have been touching it, but in any case it doesn't sound like something that would bother me much. 400 degree pizza + bacteria = dead bacteria. Different strokes, I guess.
"It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic." -- Ben Franklin