“I love to eat from the street vendors,” Bloomberg said at a Queens deli Monday. “Personally, I would love to see … a sign up there telling whether or not the guy washed his hands before he reaches in and pulls out the hot dog.”

Grading halal carts and hot-pretzel stands may seem like a good idea to Hizzoner, but the city health commissioner said it might be hard to track down the roving grub purveyors.

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The new restaurant health rating score system implement by the New York City Department of Health can be difficult for diners to understand. Restaurants receive points for violations, and receive a letter grade from A to C based on how many points they rack up. However, understanding what these violations were and how serious they are remains hard.

Applebee’s parent company, DineEquity, already operates more than 3,500 restaurant locations around the globe. Now the chain will be adding 10 new restaurants in Egypt. Other Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon and Jordan feature Applebees as well and the region has a total of 26 restaurants currently in operation.

Timothy Tatt has been hired by Carrols Restaurant Group to be the new Chief Executive Officer of the Fiesta Restaurant Group subsidy. The group manages the Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana brands. The company has decided to break their subsidy group off into a separate company by the end of the year and this is the first step in that process.

Palomino Restaurants across the country are celebrating the Siena festival currently taking place in Tuscany from now until August 14^th. This came in the form of Siena inspired menu additions and a giveaway that will send one winner to Siena itself. The winner and one guest will visit the town for the Il Palio race during 2012.

Zoe’s Kitchen, a small chain specializing in Mediterranean inspired dishes, opened its first location in Auburn, Alabama recently. This makes a total of 8 locations in the state for the chain. The restaurant serves Mediterranean flavors in pita pizzas, healthy roll ups made with lean meats and freshly grilled kabobs.

Rudy’s “Country Store” and Bar-B-Q has added a new location in Killeen, Texas. The restaurant will serve a variety of the town residents, including armed forces members from nearby Fort Hood. The grand opening took place on July 23^rd.  The first 100 guests received a free $20 gift card for use in the restaurant or store.

Olive Garden’s Pasta for Pennies fundraiser brought in over $8 million dollars for cancer research. Students around the country added their spare change to classroom containers over the course of three weeks. The class that collected the most at each school won a free pasta party at the nearest Olive Garden Restaurant.

Maggiano’s Little Italy also raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Eat-A-Dish for Make-A-Wish program let guests choose from a menu of eight dishes that all came with a donation to the foundation. The chain raised over $750,000 from menu sales and orders of Leslie’s Lemonade, a special recipe created by a Make-A-Wish Foundation recipient.

Restaurants accrue points depending on the types of violation and how many violations they are assessed. According to the Department of Health’s website, “A public health hazard, such as failing to keep food at the right temperature to prevent the growth of bacteria, triggers a minimum of 7 points. If the violation cannot be corrected before the end of the inspection, the Health Department may close the restaurant until the hazard is corrected. A critical violation, such as the presence of rodents, carries a minimum of 5 points. A general violation, such as not properly sanitizing cooking utensils, is assigned at least 2 points.”

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In a typical fraud, the phoney official contacts a restaurant and solicits sensitive banking and financial information about the business. Sometimes they threaten a restaurant with fines if the manager doesn’t call a given phone number and enter particular codes. In other variations, an eatery manager is told to expect an automated call and to dial a code when it comes.

The scammer uses the information and phone confirmations to set up fake sales on online sites like eBay, Craigslist and Kijiji from which they pocket the cash and never supply any goods.

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“They know I’m watching them every second. … You have to be diligent,” she says.

Abourezk credits her hawkish attention to cleanliness in the kitchen for her restaurant’s high health score inspections. She’s not quite satisfied when the score dips below a perfect 100 – she landed a 97 during an inspection in early February – but she feels OK with the score since she didn’t have major mishaps.

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State officials say restaurateurs have reported receiving calls from people claiming to be health inspectors or other government officials who tell the business owners of a new inspection procedure.

The phony “government official” provides a numeric code and instructs the restaurant operator to provide this confirmation code when prompted during an automated call or give the code to a health inspector who is scheduled to visit the restaurant. The caller then says that the health inspector will visit the food service establishment the next day between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., or a similar time-frame.

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Saturday, the restaurant operator got a call from someone posing as a county health inspector who said the Health Department wanted to schedule an emergency food inspection at a specific date and time. The restaurateur was asked for detailed personal and business information, and when she questioned that, was given a telephone number to call to get a special code number and was then told to call back.

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It has been there for years, in a nondescript government office in Lower Manhattan where more than a dozen administrative law judges escort their charges into cramped rooms and hear them wrangle over infractions, in a ritual reminiscent of visiting the principal’s office.

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In a two-page report presented to members of a Health Commission subcommittee, Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, San Francisco’s director of occupational and environmental health, outlined the state of the city’s food safety inspection program.

Notably, the report included a new provision that will arm health inspectors with public closure notices to post at restaurants where imminent health hazards are discovered or that have continued health code violations. Unlike Los Angeles and Sacramento, San Francisco restaurants that are closed for health violations are not required to post an official notice. Instead, owners often put up signs saying they are closed for renovations, health inspectors told Mission Loc@l earlier this year.

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