If you like to out to go eat in Houston, this report affects you.

That’s because the 11 News Defenders reviewed tens of thousands of restaurant inspection records to find out the state of restaurant cleanliness in our area.

Not only did they find some very high-profile restaurants with troublesome city health scores, but even more disturbingly, that the Houston Department Of Health and Human Services was covering something up: the inspections of restaurants with the most severe problems.

There’s no doubt. Houston is a good place to have a good meal. It is something Mark Hempen knows all about.

“It’s so easy,” he said. “There are so many places.”

But there was one place and one dinner he said he will never forget.

“Oh my goodness it was painful,” Hempen said.

Painful, because he said after the meal he got food poisoning. 

“You have it coming out both ends,” he said. And it got serious.

“I was really, really close to going to the hospital,” he said.

And he said his wife had nausea and vomiting.

So where’d they go? Cafe Japon.   He filed a complaint with the City, and a week later health department inspectors discovered “dirty kitchen equipment,” “improper food storage” and other “health violations” there.

“These are all serious,” Pete Snyder said. He’s a nationally renowned food safety expert out of Minnesota. The Defenders gave him Cafe Japon’s file to review. His conclusion?

“There’s a very high risk of vomiting and diarrhea,” he said.

But what disturbs Snyder more is that inspectors did a follow-up visit to Cafe Japon a few weeks later and found another 20 health violations, some of them “critical.”

“You should only get away with a repeat violation once,” Snyder said.

The Defenders took a comprehensive look at dining out in Houston using city records to analyze more than 10,000 restaurant inspections performed since May of 2005. We found out of 2,800 restaurants inspected during that timeframe, more than 1,700 are past due for another inspection.

What’s more? Nearly 200 eateries had the worst or second-worst health ratings possible.

“The health department needs to do something about this,” Snyder said.

One reason? Some of them are the most popular dining-out spots in the city.

So the Defenders did their own visits.

When Houston performs and inspection, the lower the score, the better.   And if you score a 16 or higher? That’s a problem- putting your restaurant into the worst or second worst category of risk the City assigns.

First up: Hooters in the Willowbrook area.  Over its last four inspections, it averaged 23 violation points by “storing food at unsafe temperatures,” having “no hand soap” and other problems.

“I can’t, I can’t talk to anybody,” an employee who later identified himself as the assistant general manager told the Defenders.

11 News: “Is there anybody — can you get your manager out here?”

Employee: “No.”

Next, the posh restaurant Hugo’s — one of the fanciest Mexican restaurants in the city, averages 26 violation points over the last two years with findings like “food not safe for human consumption” and “employees eating at food prep table.” It earned Hugo’s the worst risk level Houston assigns.

And yet they welcomed us in.

11 News: “See any major red flags?”

Pete Snyder: “The person over there with gloves on is cross-contaminating everything. She touched the dirty rag, and she didn’t change her gloves.” Snyder further noted the rag didn’t come from a sanitizing bucket.

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The 11 News Defenders decided to take a look at just how good a job Houston restaurant inspectors are doing.

Next came Yen Jing: with an average of 33 violation points a visit over the last two years.

Now under new ownership, a recent inspection rated better with only 6.5 points, and yet, we caught this exchange.

11 News: “You regularly checking the temperatures?”

Wayne Kwan: “No, not regularly.”

11 News: “Do you have a thermometer of your own you can use to test temperature of food?”

WK: “No, I don’t have one.”

Next, the Longhorn Cafe Uptown in a popular downtown Houston mall, which averages 27 violation points per visit in the last two years.

One violation?

11 News: “Roaches in the kitchen?”

Santilago Trujillo: “Well, we’ve had some issues.”

Trujillo is the general manager.

11 News: “I’m just wondering is it safe to eat here?”

ST: “It’s one of those things that we’re gonna correct it, and if you give us a chance we’ll probably do a better job.”

Finally, the Defenders visited the China Inn. It averages 31 violation points over seven inspections. They have one of the worst records in the city with inspectors finding: “food temperature violations,” “pesticide ... next to ice machine” and “more.”

But when the Defenders stopped by, they didn’t talk.

The last stop was at the city’s health department.

“We need to do something and I’m sure we will,” Michael Terasso said. Terasso runs the

environmental health section of the Health Department.

What did he say about the hold-up with re-inspecting the restaurants we found?

“We try to hit the riskier places as you suggest,” he said. “Sometimes that just doesn’t quite work. We will re-evaluate that.”

But the Defenders also found something even more disturbing.

“We’re talking about people hiding information,” Snyder said.

It turns out the very worst violations, violations that could shut a restaurant down, are being intentionally hidden from you the public. And how do we know? Because believe it or not the city admits it.  

“We’re not giving, apparently not giving the public all the information they need to make a decision,” Terasso said.

The problem: Anytime inspectors find the most serious health violations they write the restaurant a ticket. However,  Houston officials have been leaving that information out of sight from the public.   More than 4,000 of the most serious violations are simply missing from their Web site.  And if you log online to lookup a restaurant’s inspection record? You won’t see a single note of the missing records.

11 News: “There are inspections with serious violations, missing from your public Web site. Would you agree that’s a serious problem?”

MT: “That is a serious problem.”

But he said city lawyers made the Health Department do it.

“I can’t guarantee that legal will release those in any timeframe,” he said.

And in the meantime?

“They’re subjecting the Houston consumer to being a white mouse for the restaurant,” Snyder said.

“So the things that could hurt you the most, they don’t make public,” food poisoning victim Mark Hempen said.

The Defenders showed Hempen the violations the city kept offline from Cafe Japon

“There’s no way I would have gone if that information had been made available to me,” he said.

11 News asked, “Why not put a big disclaimer saying: You’ll get some of the violations, but hey if there’s a real big bad violation, you’re not gonna get that?”

MT: “You might wanna do that.”

But that’s not enough for consumers like Hempen who said all of a restaurants’ violations should be available.

“Please put it out there,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to hide that information from other people.”

As for Café Japon? They say they’re under new ownership and management now and are doing much better lately.

The Longhorn Café Uptown says they, too, are going through management changes. In a statement, they blame any pest or plumbing problems on mall maintenance. They also say they’ll do better.

As for Hugo’s? The city re-inspected them after our visit and gave the restaurant a much better rating. Also, on the day KHOU visited them, the allowed us to check their food temperatures and they were within the proper range.

And the City of Houston? Very soon after KHOU sat down with the Health Department to question their policy of hiding the worst violations from the public, the city announced a complete reversal of that policy. A spokesperson for the Health Department told KHOU they had instructed their internet vendor to begin putting online all citation information previously withheld.

The Houston Restaurant Association declined repeated attempts for comment on this story.