This past week, Joy over at Confessions of a Restaurant Whore pointed me to a disturbingly addictive new site.

Based on official local inspections, CleanScores will tell you all the gory details about your favorite restaurant. It can tell you their cleanliness rating in current years, past years, and even give details about what Major, Moderate, or Minor violations the restaurant incurred. At this time, CleanScores is only dishing the dirt on San Francisco restaurants (lucky us!), but note that they have plans to cover more infracted ground.

Joy asked this question:

Riddle me this, though: why, oh why, is it a greater violation to have a few dirty utensils than it is to have rats and mice in your kitchen? I could give two shits if my chef is downing a beer while s/he cooks, but allowing roaches to throw a little party in the back room? Not cool, bitches, not cool. That's the health department's fault, though, not the fault of Clean Scores so don't hold it against them.

Seriously.

My burning question for CleanScores has to do with listing previous years/ratings: it appears that these years are clickable, which is great because I would love to see why Kokkari got a 75 in 2003 as opposed to their current 94, yet when I do click on the 2003 report, nothing happens. Is that a bug or a feature?

In the comments at Restaurant Whore, Sam pointed out that the same official information has been available online for awhile now. She's right, but it's a fairly clugey site and, well, with that clean *ding!* mark on the spoon, and the hip design, CleanScores makes health code violations so darn pretty!

BREAKING BEER AND BIKE NEWS

This Saturday, July 21st, is the 2007 New Belgium Brewing Company's San Francisco Tour de Fat. Bring your bike and bring your beer thirst to Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park and enjoy free admission, live music, beer, food, and all manner of bike events at this annual "bike rodeo."

All proceeds from the beer sales go to benefit the San Francisco Bike Coalition and the Bay Area Ridge Trails Council. Now doesn't that make your Fat Tire taste even better?