Website gives most neighborhood restaurants clean bill of health

Stephen Becker, a Ballard resident and a programmer at Research in Motion, the company that makes BlackBerrys, was talking with a friend who wondered, ?Why no one has mapped food inspections.?

That was a good question he thought. So he went to the Public Health Dept. of Seattle and King County website and looked up restaurant inspection scores. Then he compiled the scores and posted them on a map on his new website www.dinegerous.com.

As one might expect, some indie hole-in-the-walls in less-ritzy neighborhoods scored poorly. But some places with stellar reputations were equally flagged.

?The worst place is actually one of the places I frequently ate lunch until I saw this data,? Becker told mynorthwest.com. ?It’s Asia Ginger, it’s down in Pioneer Square, it’s a little teriyaki place and me and my coworkers would eat there. It got a pretty high score and it’s changed my lunch habits completely.?

Several restaurants, cafes and even school cafeterias on Becker?s map scored well. Rudy?s, Mondello and Niko?s Gyros in Magnolia, scored a ?spotless? rating, as did the cafeteria at Catharine Blaine K-8 and Cocoa & Cream ice cream shop in the Village. Just about every eating establishment in the Village scored a ?spotless? or ?safe.? A couple of places were dinged for improper food storage or workers not trained properly.

Establishments in Queen Anne scored similarly though one was flagged for improper food storage and another for employees smoking in food preparation areas and not washing their hands. A restaurant?s previous scores can be found at http://info.kingcounty.gov/health/ehs/foodsafety/inspections/search.aspx. The inspections are based on a 400-point system. The violations are added up between red and blue violations. If the total red critical violations is 90 or more, or the total of red and blue is 120 or more, then the establishment will be closed.

Restaurant scores throughout the city were nonetheless impressive. Becker said, ?In King County, the data I have shows that only 107 restaurants have scored greater than 50. Which is actually really good because there?s actually over 10,000 places that are inspected for food safety.? Becker said he is going to continue to tweak his site by adding locations and mobile applications.