11/13: Our Most Prosperous State: NJ

NYTimes: 11/10/06 Where Officialdom Lunched, the Vermin Grazed, Too
November 10, 2006 By JONATHAN MILLER, New York Times
TRENTON, Nov. 9 — It is certainly not Pete Lorenzo’s Cafe, the restaurant of choice here where legislators and lobbyists conduct serious business while having a thick steak Pittsburgh style.

Still, when someone from the attorney general’s office or the Supreme Court staff wanted a sandwich or a cup of soup at lunchtime, the cafeteria at the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex served the purpose. But that was not all that was served, and that was the problem.

On Wednesday, after a second inspection by the state’s Department of Health, the cafeteria was shut for the foreseeable future and the vendor’s contract terminated. Inspectors found 34 violations on their first visit, on Oct. 31, including three live roaches found in the salad line, dozens of live and dead roaches around the grill and kitchen, dead rodents, rodent droppings and “dead white-winged, fly-like insects” on the garbage room floor.

All this came as little surprise to Deputy Attorney General Dan Reynolds, a frequent diner at the cafeteria, who said he usually ordered a grilled cheese sandwich — “adequate,” he deemed it — because it was one meal “you could see them making in front of you.”

Mr. Reynolds said his trips to the salad bar ended abruptly even before the cafeteria was inspected, when an e-mail message began circulating that said vermin had been found there.

“The soup wasn’t bad,” he said, but then rethought his response. “Given what the reports are, I’m not sure it’s sanitary.”

The decision to close the cafeteria, which serves about 3,000 employees in the attorney general’s office and the Department of Law and Public Safety, the New Jersey Supreme Court and other state agencies, was made by Attorney General Stuart Rabner and Dr. Fred Jacobs, the commissioner of health and senior services.

David Wald, a spokesman for Mr. Rabner, said of the cafeteria, “There were some pretty disturbing things in there.”

A spokesman for the Health Department said the cafeteria was allowed to continue operating after the Oct. 31 inspection on the condition that it remedy several problems, including food debris under meat slicers, faulty food preparation equipment and rodents.

When the cafeteria was inspected again on Wednesday, state officials found some of the violations corrected, but they said the improvements were not enough to allow it to remain open.

For Allen Smith, who works for the human resources office in the Judiciary Division, the final straw came two weeks ago, when he saw what he described as an impossibly big cockroach resting on top of a potato chip left on a counter beside a soda machine.

“Disgusting,” was his one-word assessment of the dining hall.

Mr. Wald said the state ended the contract with the vendor, Unique Food Management Inc., of Cresskill, N.J. The contract with the company, which manages no other state dining halls, was set to expire in April 2007.

The owner of Unique Food Management, Harry Murphy, told The Associated Press that the company had worked hard to correct the problems at the cafeteria, adding that the state was responsible for some of them. He said that there were already pest problems in the building when the company was hired in 2003, and that it inherited faulty equipment that the state was slow to fix.

There was no shortage of cafeteria horror stories on Thursday, as state employees roamed the neighborhood looking for a place to grab a quick and inexpensive lunch. Many described swarming ants near the soda fountain, roaches roaming the salad bar, undercooked pork, objects floating in drinks — and managers who seemed indifferent to complaints.

“I went up to the manager and said, ‘You have roaches crawling over the lids,’ ” said Mr. Smith, who added that his complaint was met with a shrug. Later, when he told the same manager about the roach on the potato chip, he said, she simply squashed the insect.

Marlaine Meskunas, who works in the Criminal Division, said she ate at the cafeteria “every day,” mostly ordering turkey sandwiches or a wrap, although most of her colleagues had stopped going there.

As for Thursday, “I didn’t eat,” Ms. Meskunas said, as she lounged outdoors in the springlike weather during her lunch break. “I’m smoking cigarettes instead.”

Mr. Smith said he was already taking a more cautious approach. “I think I’ll start bringing a lunch,” he said. “That’s a little safer. At least I know what’s going on inside my house.”