Highly recommended: Buy food at your grocer, and cook at home. Healthier, portion controlled, and cheaper.

I wouldn't put much credence in the evaluation from the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections. This is an organization that known staff issues and often exceeds its authority. There is no oversight and their power is virtually unchecked. If you want to appeal a ruling you have to pay a fee to plead your case in front of a non-binding panel composed of the same people who generated the violation.

This article illustrates why most small business people vote republican. When "slicing lemons bare-handed" is a violation of the law, the government bureaucrats have too much power.

I don't get what the purpose of food handlers wearing plastic gloves. In food shops in the downtown Minneapolis skyways, I constantly see employees touch food with their plastic gloved hands, wipe the gloves on their aprons, touch dishrags, or other things, and go back to touching food. It's like they think the gloves are there to protect their hands, not the food. It's the reason I have mostly stopped eating at food joints in Mpls skyways. I can't imagine what goes on behind the scenes.

Oysters are filter feeders. You cannot tell what is in a oyster when it is harvested or when you eat it. All filter feeders are risky to eat. That someone wants to blame a restaurant for this is insane.

While restaurants should be held to a higher standard, there is more potential to harm a large group of people, people need to realize that there is probably not a single house in this state that would pass one of these inspections. You can get sick cooking at home just as easily as at restaurant.

I'm a tad surprised at the complaints for Kincaids and D. Brians!

Way back in the day, I worked in restaurant kitchens. It looks like the rules have gotten a lot more specific and stringent. For the most part, I support these rules. They are mostly common sense codified, but unfortunately a lot of people who run or work in restaurants don't have a lot of common sense. Also, the margins are so low there is a lot of incentive to push it and use food that shouldn't be eaten. That said, I think too few people really understand the risks inherent in eating food prepared anywhere; at home or in a restaurant. Food is infinitely safer than it was before we knew about germs, but but our food supply chain is hardly spotless. There is no such thing as perfect food safety, for anyone, anywhere. Inspectors can be arbitrary and there are some notorious stories of what seem to be ulterior motivations. All in all, I support inspection rules and protocols, but I think that if consumers were more aware of the risks they take willingly and unwillingly, it would be better. If you want to eat food made from unpasteurized foods, or rare burgers, or seafood that has never been frozen, I think you should be allowed to. But you do need to know that is what you are doing, and what the risks are. I'd do it anyway, but many would not.

Meritage has a spotless kitchen with clean fabulous chefs and I would let any one of them cut my lemon without a glove. But, if THE LAW says they need to wear plastic gloves, then they will! Eating an oyster, raw, is taking a risk in any restaurant and people who do this know the risk. Accepting the risk is part of partaking of this food item. Anyone who expects 100% guarantee of not getting a bad oyster is kidding themselves and they know it. How many people enjoy a soft boiled egg, or a sunny side up egg, or an egg with a soft yolk? Folks, you are eating raw food every time you do that. I would eat at Meritage any day of the week, I would enjoy anything they serve, and, I have and I will continue. Stu Borken

Meritage: 'When you sell as many oysters as we do, these things are going to happen.”" Um, no. When you don't keep a safe, clean kitchen and storage facilities, THEn these things happen.