Your state can be a haven for restaurant health risks, from hair falling into food to rat infestations.
An analysis of Tripadvisor reviews has revealed that New Jersey tops the list with the highest number of negative reviews, especially for dirt, hair in food and vermin.
One notable omission from the top 10 list, which may surprise many, was New Jersey’s eastern neighbor, New York City, known for its staggering rat problem.
Florida and California ranked second and third dirtiest based on the number of negative reviews that included the words “dirty restaurant.”
An analysis of Tripadvisor reviews searched for the terms “dirty restaurant,” “hair in food,” and “rats and cockroaches.”
Among the restaurants with the most negative reviews on Yelp is Colony Cafe inside the Colony Hotel in Miami Beach. Diners have described seeing rats on the floor and on tables and finding hair in their food.
New Jersey is home to approximately 16,000 restaurants, the 10th highest number in the country.
However, according to Tripadvisor, it leads the pack of reviews using the term “dirty restaurant,” with 320,520 reviews.
According to the analysis, it also houses the hairiest food. More than 1,800 reviews cited “hair in food.”
A Colony Cafe customer took the photo and posted it to Yelp.
Second on the list is Florida, with 4,560 reviews of “dirty restaurants.”
Nearly 1,700 reviews say diners found hair in their food. And 636 reviews named rats and cockroaches somewhere in the restaurants.
Among the worst-rated restaurants in the state is the Colony Café in Miami.
One review posted on Yelp is from the perspective of a rat that lives in the restaurant and says: ‘The cockroaches here are very bad and ugly… A human even took pictures of me.
“I’m constantly hanging from the ceiling and it’s very annoying when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep.”
While New Jersey and Florida topped the list of reviews naming “dirty restaurants” and “hair in the food,” diners in the west were more likely to spot bugs while eating.
California had the third-most reviews, including “dirty restaurant.” While rats and cockroaches may not have been on the menus, their names were verified in more than 960 online reviews of restaurants in the state.
Even high-end establishments are not exempt from the pest problem. The Sky Terrace of the exclusive W Hotel in Hollywood was infested with rats.
staff there I found mice and rats on multiple occasions running through the hotel basement, leaving feces, urine, and bite marks around stored food and flour.
Arizona comes in at number four with 1,759 reviews, including “dirty restaurant,” 639 reviews, “hair in food,” and 443 reviews, including “rats and roaches.” Arizona, a somewhat unexpected addition to the list, has far fewer restaurants than the top three states on the list and a much smaller population.
Arizona’s Family, a state media outlet, rounds up some of the worst offending restaurants in Maricopa County to let its readers know which food establishments don’t pass the smell test.
In February, AZFamily reported that investigators at RnR restaurant in Scottsdale found rodent droppings on food and in food storage areas. That same week, investigators found that several other restaurants in the area were not properly sanitizing kitchen utensils or cooking meat until fully cooked.
Texas comes in at number five with 1,068 reviews for “dirty restaurants,” 471 reviews for “hair in food,” and 232 reviews for “rats and roaches.”
Louisiana comes in at number six with 951 reviews, including the term “dirty restaurant,” as well as 412 reviews for “hair in food” and 399 reviews for “rats and roaches.”
Last summer, inspectors more than two dozen New Orleans restaurants found cockroaches, flies, dirty equipment, spoiled food or other critical violations.
Coming in at number seven is Alabama, with 918 reviews, including ‘dirty restaurant,’ 404 reviews for ‘hair in food,’ and 141 reviews for ‘rats and roaches.’
The number eight spot goes to Maryland with 884 reviews of “dirty restaurants,” 436 reviews mentioning “hair in the food,” and 201 reviews citing “rats and cockroaches.”
Number nine is Nevada’s 881 ‘dirty restaurants’ reviews, 579 ‘hair in food’ reviews, and 414 Nevada ‘rats and roaches’ reviews.
Rounding out the list is Georgia, with 856 reviews for “dirty restaurants,” 375 reviews for “hair in food,” and 216 reviews including “rats and cockroaches.”
The analysis did not name specific restaurants or give an estimate of how many were part of a chain, such as Olive Garden or Chili’s, and how many were family-owned businesses.
But research into the dirty eating phenomenon has shown that non-chain restaurants have consistently more inspection violations than restaurant chains, regardless of how often they are inspected.
This could be due to the different types of the food chains that restaurants sell and those that are not chains. Chain restaurants, specifically fast food restaurants, generally serve foods that are less perishable and require less preparation than at non-chain restaurants, resulting in fewer foodborne illnesses and fewer inspection violations. .
Non-chain restaurants use more raw ingredients to prepare their food, opening the door to a higher risk of food poisoning. Chain restaurants also tend to have standardized food preparation protocols than non-chains.