Plaza restaurants suffer fire, health-inspection trouble

Tomfooleries on the Plaza was shut down yesterday by the Kansas City Health Department for a multitude of infractions, many of them critical.

After a routine inspection last week, the Plaza mainstay had 25 citations, 17 of them for critical actions such as employees eating, drinking or smoking around food, employees not washing hands, raw chicken stored next to heads of cabbage and, most dangerous, food in steamers in the dangerous temperature zone of 40 degrees to 140 degrees. Bacteria thrives at these temperatures, often causing food poisoning.

Perhaps the most troublesome charge levied by the health department was, “the person in charge could not demonstrate knowledge of foodborne disease prevention.”

The complete list of violations from June 22 is on KMBCs Web site. (PDF)

On the follow-up visit yesterday, the inspector noticed that several of the violations hadn’t been corrected, including the cross-contamination and employees eating, drinking or chewing tobacco around food. So the city shut down the restaurant.