Two restaurants with repeated citations from regional public health investigators have received summons and are now headed to court over food preparation and dining conditions.

Baba Chicken Grill and Yummy Chongqing Family Cuisine are located in the University Shops Plaza at 160 and 170 University Ave. W.

Both restaurants have a history of public health issues and received the court summons as a result of inspections on December 5.

Most restaurants in the region are inspected twice per year but Yummy Chongqing Family Cuisine has been visited by inspectors 15 times in the last 17 months.

Only three of those inspections found no infractions. They averaged three non-critical and one critical infraction per visit.

Critical infractions are given for food safety issues, while non-critical are for general cleanliness concerns.

Between April and December of 2019 Baba Chicken Grill had food from their premises seized and destroyed by health inspectors on five separate occasions.

A seize-and-destroy action is conducted when food is deemed by an inspector to be unsafe for human consumption.

Progessive enforcement

In the case of Yummy Chongqing Family Cuisine, the summons was issued after the inspector was "impeded," in trying to conduct their inspection, said Chris Komorowski, a manager at the Region of Waterloo public health department.

Baba Chicken Grill's summons came as a result of chronic non-compliance with health regulations.

The court summons is not a commonly-used tool in a restaurant inspector's arsenal, according to Komorowski.

Usually, inspectors will opt to provide on-the-spot education, or in some cases write a ticket.

"The vast majority of food premises don't even get to that stage. But the ones that do get to the ticket stage typically wouldn't get to the summons stage," he said.

Tickets are generally in the $50 to $500 range, but "with a summons it get's steeper, it gets more serious," he said.

Depending on the court's determination, it could result in a $5000 fine for an individual or $25,000 for a corporation.

"The justice of the peace looks at the history of noncompliance, the level of cooperation, the infractions themselves, all that," Komorowski said.