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By Vanessa Ogle
Brooklyn Daily
Mice are definitely not kosher.
Pizza By The Bay, a kosher restaurant on Jerome Avenue, was closed this month by the Health Department because of multiple, “critical” violations, including “extensive evidence of mice,” according to the agency.
The pizzeria, which opened about a year agao, was also operating without a permit.
In the Health Department’s inspection regulations, restaurants the receive 13 violation points or less in an inspection get an “A” grade, while restaurants with 28 or more violation points get “C” grades.
Pizza By The Bay received a staggering 80 violation points at its last inspection — extrapolating the city’s grading scale, this would be the equivalent of a “G” grade.
Besides indications of mice, the sanitary violations included improper food temperatures, poor worker hygiene, and a lack of soap for employees and customers.
The Health Department noted that it did not close Pizza By The Bay based on a numerical score, but rather because it was deemed a “public health hazard.”
When a restaurant fails an inspection, the city will give the business a chance to correct the violations before a reinspection several days later. In the case of Pizza By The Bay, it received 30 violation points in a June inspection, but when the Health Department reinspected the restaurant on July 9, it had somehow accumulated 50 more points worth of violations to achieve the stomach-churning score of 80 that resulted in the immediate shuttering of the pizzeria.