| « Dish on Your Favorite Power Lunch Spots | Bliss Is Not More » |
Restaurant Tue Feb 10 2009
Bleeding Heart Bakery Speaks Out About Closure
Michelle Garcia of Bleeding Heart Bakery distributed a news release today explaining the circumstances surrounding its closure yesterday due to health code violations. The full text of the release follows after the jump.
Despite the shock and dismay that often arises with such closures, the reasons behind them are often more procedural than anything that truly endangers customers' health. In Bleeding Heart's case, some temporary and easily fixed plumbing issues and a late trash pickup were involved, compounded with some missing paperwork regarding employee certification, led to a mandatory closure. If it were just one of the three problems, the bakery may have simply gotten a slap on the wrists and an order to have it fixed for another inspection in a couple days, rather than a week off.
Obviously, if the inspection reported rodent droppings, things would be different. But if you look at the details on this case, it was much ado about not very much.
Breaking News: Stop the Rumors! The truth Behind the Very Temporary Closing of Bleeding Heart Bakery
It was reported yesterday, 2/9/09, that the Chicago Health Department conducted a routine inspection of Bleeding Heart Bakery, resulting in its closing due to clogged sinks, no manager on duty and overflowing garbage in the alley. The blogs, internet and news has run am muck with the story and many speculations and slanderous comments have been made.
We are writing this statement to put a stop to the rumors and to state our side of the story, which not one reporting agency, besides the Booster, has bothered to ask.
On Sunday night, after service, our kitchen sink became clogged, once noticed in the morning, the sink was covered and not used. The hand sink near by was affected and was also closed. These are two of 6 sinks we have in the bakery, three of which are hand sinks. This in no way said that we were not either washing our hands (as there is a sink 15 feet away for that) or our dishes. We were not actually open and no food could have in anyway been affected. Drano (yes, I know...bad) had already been purchased and cleared the drain in minutes. Problem solved before 11am.
We get our trash serviced every Monday by Waste Management. They usually come around 10 am which they did yesterday. As our inspection was between 8 and 9, the garbage was not emptied yet. We pay for this service and they come faithfully every week.
There were two members of the staff present both of which had their sanitation license, they were not asked for it. However, the bakery was cited for not having a staff member with their sanitation license present. The owner, Michelle recently had surgery and had to run out for 1 hour to a post op appointment. This one hour just happened to be the hour the health department showed up. Interesting.
We have always prided ourselves on our cleanliness and have supported an open kitchen from the very beginning to prove we have nothing to hide.
We apologize for any problems this may cause people, we have already gone back to the city and will be re-inspected within 48 hours, which is routine procedure. We will be open for business this weekend or sooner, without a doubt, and we will be celebrating another wonderful Valentines Day.
Michelle & Vinny Garcia
The Bleeding Heart Bakery
1955 W Belmont Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657
773.327.6934
UPDATE: Bleeding Heart reopened Wednesday after being given full clearance by the health department.
egspoony / February 10, 2009 1:42 PM
I've been there and bought from them... They are aware of their cleanliness as I observed and when this first broke out, I thought something fishy was going on with the inspection.
I am glad that Michelle was able to respond to the closing.