New Yorkers will begin seeing at their eateries what Angelenos have since 1998: letter grade placards by the Health Department. Starting this week, The Big Apple's 24,000 restaurants, from the pizza-by-slice joints to David Chang's Momofuku, are mandated to display their new Health Department rating designating whether their cleaniness deserves an A, B, or C.
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Restaurant groups fought the move. Most worried that any establishment with a B or C would go out of business as customers flock to a competitor with an A rating; but public pressure ultimately won out. The LA Times reported the adoption of the L.A.-style system was to stem an increase in food-borne illness. It said “11,000 people go to hospitals in New York City for food-borne illness related to eating out, and that number is rising.”
As qouted in the LA Times, David Chang, the Momofuku mogul himself, is taking the new system as a personal challenge. “It is our goal always to get an A,” he said. “If we don't get an A, we fail.”
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.