The owner of a Montreal-style bagel shop in Cobble Hill says Health Department inspectors are asking the impossible, levying heavy fines for insignificant infractions like seeds on the floor. B&B Empire Bagels, which we reviewed as soon as it opened last year, has been fined $1,650 by the city for supposedly "incidental infractions" such as fallen sesames. Owner Alex Gormakh says inspectors cited him for sesame and poppy seeds that fall on the floor, telling the Post, “It is impossible to clean up after each and every bagel. It is impossible. It is a process." more ›

Would you be surprised to learn that Subway, the restaurant franchise with the most locations in the city (372 or 430 depending on who you ask), has had more of its franchises shut down by the Department of Health than any other chain in the city? True story. The Daily News crunched the numbers and found that 55 Subways have been shut down for violations in the past five years. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is the grossest chain in the land. more ›

But, but, but! Where will West Village romantics go for date nights now? The neighborhood's much loved, super quaint, corner Mediterranean restaurant The Little Owl was shut down by the Department of Health last night. Maybe they should have called it The Little Mouse, instead? Wocka, wocka, wocka! more ›

After restaurant and bar owners pushed back against the Health Department's grading system last week, Mayor Bloomberg is letting everyone know that the DOH's red pen is wielded for our own good. "Kitchens across the City are cleaner," the mayor said in his Sunday radio address, pointing to 7% jump in "A" rated restaurants within a year. Salmonella infections are also at a 20-year-low. "That’s great news for everyone who lives or works in our City, or who visits us on business or on vacation." So they can stop salmonella, but not Dorito-based taco shells? more ›

The New York Times rolled out a nifty interactive map cataloging restaurant sanitary inspections, putting all the dirty details at diner's fingertips. The vast majority of restaurants in our fair city receive high marks from the Department of Health, a good chunk don't—and now you can search through those by specific violation. Because you can still earn an A after evidence of rodents and roaches is detected. Would you be surprised to see that hundreds of restaurants across are home to furry frenemies? more ›

When it comes to suicide, the Big Apple is not top tomato. According to a new report from the city Health Department [PDF] New Yorkers are less likely to successfully kill themselves than the average American. Still, every year an average of 475 New Yorkers kill themselves and more than 3,600 are hospitalized with self-inflected injuries. more ›

Last week we were aghast at how the New York Times and Big Soda combined to heap outrage on the Health Department's photoshopped ad campaign against diabetes. You'd have thought Mayor Bloomberg personally fed this actor into the woodchipper! Now, the Times has spoken with the man who posed for the picture, Cleo Berry, who was apparently "stunned" when he saw his image in the ad for the first time on Friday. "I was beyond shocked. I cried at my computer screen for, like, a minute." More than the crocodile tears he shed for this sandwich ad in which he gets viciously beaten? That is what happened, isn't it? more ›

Everyone's favorite Disneyland-on-acid-esque congee emporium, Congee Village (the one on Bowery, not Allen Street), has been shuttered by the Health Department after racking up 55 violation points on a recent visit, reports The Lo-Down. more ›

Restaurateurs, the City Council feels your pain. Though the Department of Health's restaurant letter grade program has proved popular among consumers, many restaurateurs are still not loving it. Some are even taking pains to skirt DOH inspections. But don't worry, 2013 election-ready Speaker Christine Quinn and her Council hears the cry of the common cook and is doing something about it! Why, they've even set up an online survey! more ›

Nanny Bloomberg's Department of Health is letting itself go this term! Just three years ago they were terrifying New Yorkers with soda that turned into human fat in the air and now they are resorting to fat chicks on scooters and expanding hamburger line graphs. Even compared the department's recent "casual smoking will KILL you" campaign this one seems lackluster. Still, they got us to talk about them? more ›

Restaurateurs aren't exactly big fans of the Department of Health (see: the guy who got big fines, he says, for photographing an inspector working) but the Daily News today notices an interesting way that some are getting out of the standard inspections entirely: Just claim to be a supermarket or a warehouse! more ›

According to a Manhattan restauranteur, a camera-shy health inspector fired off a litany of violations as soon as he began documenting the inspection. Bill Koulmentas, the owner of George's diner in Tribeca, tells the Post that because he pulled out his iPhone to document a visit from a DOH inspector yesterday, the inspector became angry and wrote him up for 65 points worth of violations, and shuttered the restaurant for the first time since September 11, 2001. "They can do anything they want, Koulmentas says. "Something's out of control here. It's lies, lies, lies." more ›

Smoking, Nanny Bloomberg likes to remind us, will kill you. But don't think that your "I only smoke bummed ciggies at parties" routine makes you safe. Oh, no. The Department of Health wants you to know YOU COULD STILL DIE. So they're launching a print and TV campaign to help "light smokers" become "nonsmokers." Because you don't want to die, do you? more ›

The rules for restaurants and bars, they are a changing. As the Times notes, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene today is set to approve a number of changes to Article 81 of the city's Health Code, the document that governs sanitation rules for food-service establishments (you can see the whole thing right here in this pdf). Finally, bartenders won't have to wear hair nets! Because, yeah, even if they so much as handled a lime they were supposed to. Now they tell us! more ›

Not too long ago the Department of Health paid of visit to the New Museum's Carsten Höller Experience exhibit, which features a sensory deprivation tank, called the "Psycho Tank." Upon their departure they told the museum the tank, which visitors float around in naked, could only have one person in it at time, but overall cleared the exhibit. Now a recent visitor is claiming she contracted an ear infection from the tank, as did her boyfriend. She tells us: more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] According to some people with Twitter accounts, Williamsburg's beloved Union Pool was shut down by the mean old Department of Health last night, a city agency that clearly can't appreciate life's more refined pleasures, like wine served in a cup and key bumps in a crowded bathroom. more ›

Over the past few months, the Health Department has put the kibosh on many a beloved Brooklyn food institution (see: Di Fara, Turkey's Nest), but now, the DOH has shuttered an actual Brooklyn institute—the City Tech cafeteria—for a slew of health code violations so egregious you may very well lose your lunch. more ›

Just months after her first fashion show, the city Department of Health & Mental Hygiene has sent Matilda the Algonquin cat into exile! The department has banished the cat from her lobby lounge, according to the NY Post, and she's now reduced to being on a leash behind the check-in desk, or lounges on a higher floor, away from where food and drinks are being served. A manager also told inspectors that they contained Matilda with an electronic fence. more ›

Old-school Theater District haunt Sardi's got slapped by the cold hand of the law last night, when the bar-snack hating Health Department visited and ordered the bar to stop offering their signature free communal cheese pots and bowls of pretzels and peanuts to guests. more ›

If you've wandered up Bedford Avenue lately in search of a cheap oversized margarita in a Styrofoam to-go cup, you've probably noticed, and been bitterly disappointed, that perennial dive-bar favorite Turkey's Nest Tavern has been shuttered since last week. It's a real blow to the neighborhood's legions of drunk McCarren park picnickers, and the cranky old men who stare at them. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg, who apparently harbors a dirty water habit himself, thinks the city's street food vendors should be subject to the same letter grading system as brick-and-mortar restaurants—but the Health Department isn't so sure. more ›