There’ve been worse times to be in the restaurant business, but not many. Obviously things were horrible for the business sector during the height of COVID-19 when restaurant shutterings were as common as a new Hollywood superhero movie. That era of the coronavirus, especially during the spring of 2020, practically drove a stake into the heart of the industry.

Now, after taking what looked to be a knockout punch, the restaurant business is slowly getting up on very wobbly legs, recovering a bit from the coronavirus, and now being slammed by inflation, trouble finding workers, and the latest: a fear of health inspections.

Although officials say the Health Department is doing what it’s always done with regard to restaurant inspections—visiting each place at least once a year and reacting to customer complaints and issuing citations and ordering closures when evidence of vermin is detected or other safety issues arise, such as no hot or potable water—closures have been far more frequent this year than in the pre-COVID-19 days of early 2020.

In the first three months of 2020—those pre-COVID months when things were still relatively normal—the city shut down seven restaurants, two for water or sewage issues and the rest for vermin. In the first three months of this year, there have already been 19 closures, one for no hot water and 18 for vermin.

The list of restaurant closures is published on the Health Department’s website and includes some notable places, such as Parkers’ Lighthouse, Liv’s, the 4th Horseman and Portfolio Coffeehouse.

Health inspections, which can result in brief or extended closures of a food business, isn’t something restaurateurs are eager to talk about—they’re like moles afraid to pop up and show themselves for fear of being whacked.

“I don’t want to jinx anything,” one told me.

“I don’t think I deserved to be cited, but I’m not going to talk about it because I don’t like to remind people that I was closed for an infraction,” said another. “It’s embarrassing.”

The Health Department rarely revokes a license permanently—a notable exception was Restauration in January 2021 after the owner repeatedly flouted COVID-19 health orders, officials say. When the city closes restaurants, it’s only for as long as it takes for the issue to be rectified, typically a day or two but occasionally for a week or longer.

Despite the increased number of citations and closures this year, the health department says it is not targeting the industry and that inspectors try to be reasonable when it comes to infractions.

“We do have an education-first approach where possible but we are required to close under certain circumstances, such as the presence of vermin,” Long Beach Health Department spokesperson Jennifer Rice-Epstein wrote in an email. “These closures were conducted by different Health Inspectors assigned to their designated food districts, and not a single health inspector. Inspectors range in experience from four to 32 years, and inspectors obtain supervisor approval before temporarily suspending a health permit.”

Luis Navarro is one of the few restaurant owners to go on the record with dissatisfaction regarding inspections. He says he’s been visited eight times by health inspectors since January, a number boosted by the fact that he and his wife Brenda own four dining establishments in town—Lola’s Mexican Cuisine spots on Fourth Street’s Retro Row and in Bixby Knolls, the Social List on Retro Row and Portuguese Bend Restaurant and Distillery in Downtown.

He’s been cited, but not forced to close at any point, but he still doesn’t care for the process and the frequency of inspections.

“I’m not questioning the closures, not making excuses,” said Navarro. “But they don’t want to talk about it. They cited me for my dish-washing machine because they said it tested for no bleach. I don’t use bleach. We use multi-quat sanitizers. I said can you test if for multi-quat, and they said no and just wrote up ‘major violations observed.’”

Navarro says he tries to reason with inspectors, but that they’re rarely in the mood to negotiate. “Their job should be to reprimand, make recommendations, not close a business down and put people out of work again.”

According to the Health Department’s Rice-Epstein, inspectors conducted 83 routine inspections March 1 and March 29, with 30 follow-up inspections. During that period, she said, six restaurants were temporarily closed—about 7% of those inspected, all for vermin. Further, she said, a third of the places inspected were visited following a customer complaint from a person who personally witnessed the vermin.

Real or perceived aggressiveness of health and code enforcement offices is a topic that’s discussed in both Downtown and Bixby Knolls areas. Adding to the woes of Downtown restaurateurs is the COVID-19 byproduct of the waning of office workers going to work in area offices, coupled by the noise and debris of incessant construction around Downtown.

In an attempt to cool things off between merchants and the city, Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Executive Director Blair Cohn has been serving as a liaison between the city and business owners in his district.

“Health has a job to do, we understand, we’re not trying to get in the way. But can we change the tone a bit?” he said. “You’re on your last nerve and then the pandemic hits and then it comes back again and you’re trying to feed your family and you’re set back on your heels again. We acknowledge the problem, but it’s not back to normal, people still have trauma feeling the pressure.”

Cohn said he has been in talks with the city, including with City Manager Tom Modica.

The city manager said in an interview that he’s had conversations with Cohn as well as representatives from other business districts in the city and acknowledged that there are sometimes perhaps better ways to deal with code enforcement and health inspections, but, he said, “It’s a balance, and health and safety has to come first.”

Cohn said, speaking about code enforcement and health inspections:  “We have to find a nicer way to deal with those going through the COVID trauma. A business is not a building, it’s people and the majority here are mom and pops trying to make a living, and put food on the table, not trying to bypass public safety, it’s just someone who’s gone through so much. We just need to have a gentler way of handling the problem and try to figure out the best way to do it rather than just saying, ‘Here’s the code book.’ People need some breathing room.”

Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.