Don’t mess with eatery placards
Restaurateurs, think carefully before even touching that color-coded inspection placard bestowed by the state Department of Health.
Iyo Udon restaurant at Ala Moana Center has been fined $11,000 for intentionally removing a yellow "conditional pass" placard and for food safety violations, which basically amounted to improper employee hygiene violations.
It got the yellow placard — green is good, red is bad — as part of a new statewide system to help safeguard public health at eateries.
The irony for Iyo Udon is that just three days after receiving the yellow rating, a follow-up inspection showed it had corrected the violations, and the restaurant now has the green placard.
Better start moving those noodles to cover the $11,000 loss.
Stars to be out for groundbreaking
The planned Oct. 7 groundbreaking for Mauna Kea’s Thirty Meter Telescope — a project long awaited by some, long reviled by others — is bound to be at least somewhat constrained by such Earth-bound concerns as legal challenges.
Remember, there still is a lawsuit pending in Third Circuit Court, Hilo.
But perhaps the strategy here is to press on. After all, the Honolulu rail project had its groundbreaking and survived its lawsuits.
On the other hand, there was the Superferry.
Ah, yes, who could forget?
