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But ask anyone in the restaurant biz (or any inspectors who are willing to speak candidly) and you’ll discover it’s much more complicated. To quote a friend of mine from her post on a local message board:

“Health inspection scores don’t enter into my decisions about where to eat. One of the best meals I’ve eaten in Atlanta in my 18 years here was at a restaurant (Honto) that famously scored a 25 on their health inspection. I’d actually love to go back in time and have that meal again.

As a restaurant manager, I’ve seen lots of things that cause me to doubt the veracity and reliability of health inspections as well. Unfortunately, I took over a location of a restaurant one day, after firing the previous manager, and I happened to get a surprise inspection that same day. I got a score of 79, but that was mainly because the inspector saw enough violations to bring me down to an 83, but she looked around for one more to bring the score under 80, which would mean that she’d have to reinspect within a week, giving me a quick opportunity to get a higher score. I got a 98 on re-inspection.

Another time, an inspector took 8 points off because he found one hermetically sealed container of non-dairy creamer that was far enough out of the ice bath that it registered 41 degrees, and that counts as “food held at improper temperatures.””

Incidentally, the lowest rated resto in that AJC blog post was Twain’s with a 68. But if you actually take the time to click through the link, you’ll see that two weeks later they were reinspected and earned a 93.

Cool looking bar…looks a lot like the one at Smith’s (Atlanta) and Peerless Saloon (Anniston, AL). Them Nolans have an eye for good lookin’ bars.