Posted on 01/16/2014 1:31:42 PM PST by nickcarraway
Many consider sushi an art. But a new state law will soon require a glove between these artists and their creations.
"The service is going to be slow because of the glove," said Gary Wong, a sushi chef. "When you're making sushi, you have to use the bare hand to feel the texture and the fish."
Wong also worries that gloves could lead to fingers getting cut with a slip of the knife. And it's a worry shared across cuisines, like at Pican in downtown Oakland.
"It's difficult because your hands sweat," said Sophina Uong, Pican's executive chef. "You're in a very dangerous environment when you're dealing with high degrees of heat, going in and out of the oven."
Because Pican has a full bar, even their bartenders must wear gloves or use tongs. From squeezing limes to picking up olives, bartenders are prohibited from touching anything with their bare hands.
"You have to be worried about food-borne contaminants, but I'm just not aware of what the law is addressing," said Michael Leblanc, Pican's owner. "Because I'm not aware of this big illness that's going around."
Frequent diners also don't seem to understand what problem the new rule is solving.
"To put a glove on, it doesn't prevent anything," said Dennis Vales, a customer. "You pick up the glove with your hands. You open them and put them on. You've already touched the glove. It's senseless."
Leave it to CA liberals to ban plastic bags and mandate plastic gloves.
This is a pernicious law, written by people not informed or familier in the industry. I suppose that that is almost always true, isn’t it?
I wonder if they will require gloves at gay bath houses.
They take your dirty money with the same hands that fixed your food.
Gloves? Yes. Condoms? No.
It's not like the gloves are magically germ free. Once contaminated everything they tough is contaminated. It realville, it's probably WORSE than bare hands because when your hands get dirty you might consider washing them but no one washes the gloves and this guy at least didn't change them at all.
Then, once they have gloves on, they are probably less likely to wash or rinse their hands between steps in food preparation, since their hands won’t feel dirty or sticky. This would seem to make them more likely to cross-contaminate food items or utensils than with no gloves.
and pick up items of the floor, inadvertently scratch an itch, touch knobs on freezer doors etc that others have...
In Virginia, you are required to scrub your hands before you apply plastic gloves, then again after you remove them. I don’t know what the laws are elsewhere. I’m surprised it took so long for this law to make it to California.
Wong is wight.
We’ll played
Excellent point!
I wonder what Jon Taffer would say about that.
Stupid law. You can’t cook with gloves on!
The kids at burger-doodle wearing gloves aren’t ‘cooking’, they just assemble things.
The bartender probably wears them to keep all the dirt off his hands. LOL
‘Had Enough Yet
Exactly right
How does wearing gloves change that?
At Whole Foods I watched a butcher, who had a glove on only one hand, pick his nose with his gloved hand.
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