20 NYC Food Carts Get 'A' Grades In 1st Round Of Inspections

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Many New York City food vendors are passing new health inspections with flying colors. Twenty of the first 24 vendors inspected over the past month have gotten A's under the city's new letter grading system, officials revealed Friday.

The other four are awaiting a new inspection after racking up a load of violations or were forced to close, according to the city Department of Health.

"Just because these local food vendors may be moving around the city, just because they may not have fancy things in their windows, they're actually meeting the same standards as our restaurants," Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city health commissioner, said.

The Health Department started the new inspections in December and aims to give the city's roughly 5,500 food carts and trucks a letter grade over the next two years. A law the City Council passed in 2017 established the grading system, which is similar to the one that has been used in restaurants since 2010.

Inspectors check on a range of conditions including the temperature at which food is stored and how it is handled, Barbot said. The vendor is given an A, B or C grade that must be displayed on their cart or truck.

Since initial inspections started in mid-December, 17 vendors in Manhattan, two in Queens and one in Brooklyn had gotten A's through Jan. 16, according to a Health Department list.

Two vendors were closed because they were unlicensed and two others need to be re-inspected because they got at least 14 points for sanitary violations, the list shows.

Mahmoud Abdel Wahed's Mo's Coffee Cart on the Lower East Side was among the first establishments to get an A. Wahed said the inspection took him by surprise, he said — the Health Department makes unnanounced visits, just like in restaurants.

All Wahed did to get his A was "keep clean" and make sure "everything is nice," he said. While getting a bad grade could hurt dirty vendors, he said, high marks could help clean ones stand out from the crowd.

"There’s big competition between us and the big restaurants, the fast food restaurants," said Wahed, an Astoria resident who has been in the business since 1992.

The Health Department uses location-sharing technology to track vendors down for inspections, though the location data is deleted after 24 hours, Barbot said.

The inspections are like an "open-book test," the commissioner said, as the department offers "technical assistance" to vendors so they can understand what they'll be tested for when they're about to be inspected. The Health Department said it is also distributing a worksheet vendors can use to check their own safety practices.

But the mobile carts are held to the same standards as restaurants, Barbot said, so New Yorkers should feel good grabbing a bite to eat wherever they see an A.

"We don't grade on a curve," she said. "An A is an A is an A, whether it's for a restaurant or a mobile food truck."

City Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Queens) sponsored the legislation that set up the grading system for food carts — even though she had never eaten from one. She changed that Friday by buying a baked good from Wahed's cart.

"I’m going to get a coffee and buttered roll," she told reporters.

(Lead image: Mahmoud Abdel Wahed's cart on the Lower East Side was among the first mobile food vendors to get an A under the city's new grading system. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)