The Rainforest Cafe at Arizona Mills Mall failed its most recent county restaurant inspection — with violiations including one complaint we hadn’t seen before:…

  Hospital cafeterias are renowned for serving food that’s not so tasty, but we thought such a place would at least follow the rules. And yet the Arizona Heart Hospital near 19th Street and Thomas hasn’t passed a county restaurant inspection since February 2007! The cafeteria has received failing marks…

Maybe you should call it Red, White & EEEEWWWW. The Chandler restaurant on Gilbert Road had some issues regarding old meat (and we’re not talking about aged in a good way) during its last (failing) county restaurant inspection.  …

A Februrary 23 inspection of the restaurant at the San Carlos Hotel in downtown Phoenix revealed, among other things, “white sauce containing cooked chicken and vegetables…date marked 2/11/09.” The manager discarded the mystery sauce. Good. We figure most things that are white have a much shorter shelf life. Speaking of…

We remember when Hob Nobs, a coffee shop at McDowell Road and 3rd Avenue in Phoenix, used to be Willow House. Not a particularly clean joint. But we hear good things about the new place, which is why we were dismayed to see that Hob Nobs failed its recent county…

Of the last five restaurant inspections completed at Tomaso’s Italian restaurant on East Camelback Road in Phoenix, five resulted in a failing grade. At the most recent inspection, in early March, the inspector noted dried food debris on the interior of the microwave and surfaces of the slicer. The meat…

We gotta hand it to restaurant inspectors for the first “theme report” we’ve seen since starting Gross Out. A recent inspection, which earned Saddle Ranch Chop House in Glendale a “No Award” from Maricopa County, is all about hands. And fingers. From the report:  …

If you want to schmooze with local political types, go to El Portal, County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox’s restaurant just south of downtown Phoenix. But you might not want to order anything to eat. We suppose it’s good to know that the county restaurant inspectors aren’t mincing words with a…

Shangri La? Not the first image that comes to mind when you read the recent county restaurant inspection report for the so-named Chinese restaurant on Alma School Road in Mesa. Raw sprouts were too warm. There was no hand soap in the employee restroom. Opened cans of food were stored…

At Wright on Main (on Main Street in Mesa), Maricopa County restaurant inspectors recently found something rare — at least, it hasn’t turned up in dozens of inspection reports reviewed in the last few months. Mice. And roaches. Also “excessive” droppings from both. (What would qualify as non-excessive, one wonders?) Food…

If you eat at Efes Turkish Cuisine in Tempe (in the same strip mall as Changing Hands Bookstore, southwest corner of Guadalupe and McClintock), chances are, you’ll be doing some naval gazing. The restaurant often features belly dancing. But you might be better off checking out the cooks’ fingernails. A recent…

Look, if you’re going to name a business “Dirty Drummer” and serve food at it, better make sure it’s clean, that’s all we’re sayin’. The DD on Beck Avenue in Chandler failed a recent county restaurant inspection. Now, it’s not the worst report we’ve ever seen, but again, given the…

“OOOOH!” a colleague said, after learning that a recent inspection at the Washington Street outpost of the famed Los Dos Molinos restaurant revealed reused chip bowls. “That’s always my worst fear — that you’ll get that bowl with someone else’s cuticle pieces and other stuff from their fingers in it.”…

Please say you’ve had a Sprinkles cupcake. If you haven’t — and you live in metropolitan Phoenix — by all means, get in your car and head to one of the cupcake boutique’s few outposts, luckily located in Scottsdale on the northeast corner of Scottsdale and Camelback roads. It’s worth…

Calabria Italian Grocery and Deli at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Roosevelt in Phoenix sure looks cool — but that was apparently not enough for county restaurant inspectors, who gave the deli a “No Award” rating (the lowest possible) last month. Without the health violations, this is the kind…

Please excuse our absence. Gross Out got food poisoning and was out of commission for a while. But we’re back! And this time with news of the “No Award” given last month by county restaurant inspectors to Urban Campfire, the Tempe restaurant in the spot that once housed Greasy Tony’s…