New Monterey County app reveals restaurant inspection results

A new way to make sure your next restaurant visit won’t end with an un-welcome trip to the restroom or hospital.

The Monterey County Health Department released a phone app this week with information about inspections for nearly all Monterey County restaurants. It’s called “MC Food Inspection Findings” and it organizes the restaurants by how close they are to you. You can also pull up a map or search for a specific place.

“I think everyone who goes to a food facility wants to know and feel safe that the facility there is following food safety practices,” Environmental Health Bureau Director, John Ramirez, said.

Once you choose a restaurant you have information from recent inspections. It lists when they were and if there were any violations ranging from minor to major.

Ramirez said they are most concentrating on the “major” issues, things like food being contaminated or not stored at or cooked to a proper temperature. This app will give you that information, and also let you submit your own concerns.

“Enter the information into the app. You can even photograph what the concern is. It gets submitted to our office over here and then we follow up with a complaint investigation. So it’s an additional inspection that we conduct,” Ramirez said.

The county does inspections at least twice a year. This information has been on their website but they’ve been working on the app for the last three years after seeing it in other California counties.

However, not every type of restaurant is on the app. Food trucks are not yet available.

“Every food facility that we permit, is required by law to provide you, as the purchaser, a copy of the most recent food inspection permit,” Ramirez said.