Miakos asian BistroA popular Asian restaurant on Main Street in Vineyard Haven was temporarily closed for unsafe food handling practices last week, but was cleared to open again on Friday.
The Tisbury Board of Health penalized Mikado Asian Bistro and cited several public health concerns, including that fish, soup, and rice were left out overnight to be served the following day.
Drew Belsky, the Tisbury health agent, said he conducted two recent inspections at Mikado. During the first one, last Friday, he found unsafe food handling and unclean conditions, and told the operators of the restaurant to fix the issues at hand.
Belsky decided after a follow-up inspection on Dec. 15 to temporarily order the restaurant to close. He told The Times they hadn’t addressed his initial concerns appropriately and he was concerned about the safe-handling of food and the health of their patrons.
“We want all the kitchen employees trained in food handling,” Belsky said in an interview. In order to reopen, he said all employees need to be certified in safe food practices, and need to provide “an operating procedure for their nightly clean up routine so it doesn’t continue to build up like it did.”
Belsky said the most alarming finding from the inspection was rice that was left in a cooker overnight that was planned by staff to be served the following day. A heat-resistant bacteria, called Bacillus cereus, can form on rice in these conditions, which could cause a condition referred to as “fried rice syndrome.” Symptoms can range from stomach cramps and nausea to, in very extreme and rare cases, fatalities.
Other citations included improper food storage and dirty kitchen appliances. Raw fish was stored on top of “ready to eat” seaweed in a fridge; soup was left out on the counter overnight; sauces were left unrefrigerated for hours; expired scallops were not disposed of; a “mold-like substance” was seen in the ice machine; and accumulated grease dripped from hood vents above the flat-top grill.
In the inspection report, photographs showed the extent of the citations. Metal containers were reused without being cleaned and food was stored next to a mop area near a drain on the floor for dumping chemicals and dirty water. Open garbage was left in the kitchen through the night instead of brought to a dumpster outside.
While some of these citations, like the storage of rice and soup, were fixed by Monday’s inspection, others were not. Surfaces were not properly cleaned, trash was left overnight a second time, and other risks for food contamination were found by the health agent.
The owner of Mikado, Kevin Yu, told The Times he didn’t realize the dangers of leaving rice out in a cooker overnight and has instructed his staff to dispose of rice at the end of each night and make it fresh before each service. But as for the soup and sauces, Yu said they always dispose of the leftovers before active service, but “there’s no way to prove” that fact to the health agents.
“The main issue that we had was they thought we were serving leftover food from the previous day, which we don’t. All the soup that we have here was cooked daily. We normally dump out the soup after we close… The soup [in the photographs] was never served to any of our customers,” Yu said in a phone interview.
Yu said he ensured that all staff were ServeSafe certified before reopening, which is a necessary program that servers, kitchen staff and managers have to undergo in the restaurant industry that teaches them safe food handling. And he and his team spent the entire day Friday preparing to open again, remaking dishes to ensure freshness.
On a social media post that addressed the closure, the Mikado Asian Bistro team thanked the community for its patience while they made changes.
“We’ve strengthened our kitchen procedures, completed additional staff training, and refreshed our space to ensure we’re operating at the highest level,” the post read. They also added they’ll be open at 5pm on Friday. A representative of Mikado Asian Bistro was not immediately available for comment.