Cockroaches back at Colorado Springs Chinese restaurant, Thai spot takes this week’s gold plate
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - The cockroaches are back at one local Chinese spot, but an Asian restaurant on the north side of town is taking the gold plate as this week’s high score!
Low scores:
This comes after the E Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard eatery was temporarily closed in October.
The restaurant passed its reinspection days later, but when health department officials returned this month to make sure things still looked good, they did not.
The restaurant saw a return of the cockroaches, dead and alive!
The inspector also noted that an employee washed their hands, then dried them on a visibly soiled apron, shrimp, chicken, and beef were at room temperature, and a container of single-use gloves was stored on the floor.
In a text message, the New Panda owner responded, saying they’ve now completed a full-restaurant pest treatment and retrained all employees…
But, they didn’t want us to come by, saying in part:
“We appreciate your interest in documenting our progress, but we’d prefer to hold off on visitors right now. Our team is fully focused on our re-inspection while delivering seamless service to our guests.”
High scores:
Welp… time for the high scores:
Monica's Taco Shop on Palmer Park Boulevard, Ruffrano's Hell's Kitchen Pizza on E Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard, and the fairly new White Lotus Café near North Gate and Voyager!
“Slowly we get more and more customers in,” White Lotus Café owner Jasmine Andrew said in an interview with KRDO’s Julia Donovan.
Andrew says it’s easy to get a great score, you just have to clean, clean, clean… non-stop clean!
Okay, that might sound a little extreme, but they clean as they go and don’t stop there.
“We clean everything every night, deep clean weekly,” Jasmine told us.
The standards for their ingredients are just as high!
“Everything we make [is] from scratch, everything we prepare here,” Jasmine explained.
We’ll tell ya – the proof is in the pudding!
... OR, the pineapple fried rice and the coconut cake. Delicious!
Keep an eye out for the KRDO13 Restaurant Roundup awards at your favorite restaurant to know the kitchen inside is clean.
Reminder: all of our high and low-scoring restaurants are based on routine health inspections conducted by the El Paso County Health Department.
Click here for a look at all the most recent health inspection scores.
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