The Port Arthur Health Department wants you to know the score when you visit a restaurant. The department is once again posting scores online for everyone to see.

Nathaniel Collins Jr., the chief sanitarian, is responsible for reviewing reports, examining restaurant scores, and ensuring each establishment meets health standards. It all starts with random inspections.

“We don’t let them know when we’re coming, so we just pop up and do regular inspections,” Collins said. “We’ve always done it that way, but when it comes to the scores, we just started posting them again.”

Until recently, you had to file an open records request to get Port Arthur’s restaurant inspection scores.

“When we walk into these places and see the hard work they’re doing, we want to shed light on that,” Collins said. “We want the public to know that these are the restaurants you’re eating at, and they’re showing exemplary on their inspection forms.”

In the latest report, posted Wednesday, the scores include inspections at 10 restaurants, each earning 90 or above. Three earned perfect 100s.

One of those restaurants is Chipotle Mexican Grill on Highway 365.

“It feels great. I have my team to thank for that,” General Manager Dustin Harper said. “They work really hard, and I couldn’t do it without them. I lead them to do it, but it’s all them that makes it happen.”

Harper credits the perfect score to quarterly food safety audits, employee wellness checks, and proper sanitation.

“Chipotle takes food safety very seriously, so I don’t see us not getting a 100 anytime soon, to be honest,” Harper said.

If any restaurant receives a score below an A, the Port Arthur Health Department works with them to improve their scores through education.

City of Port Arthur Health Department’s restaurant performance report:

Even warships need a little TLC.

USS LST-325, one of the most prominent examples of Evansville’s World War II contributions, left its dock at 610 N.W. Riverside Drive on Jan. 14 for a one-week voyage to the Port of Port Arthur, Texas, to undergo a Coast Guard inspection. Required every 10 years for operational ships, the LST’s last inspection was in 2013.

Chris Donahue, director of the LST Ship Memorial Inc., says the organization saves money accrued from annual trips to fund this maintenance. He says the LST is “in pretty good shape for an 80-year-old gal” and is expected to get “a good report card” during the inspection. The ship is estimated to return home by March 15.

With a budget of $1.5 million for all dry dock work in 2024, the LST — or Landing Ship Tank — departed Evansville with a 40-person crew for Port Arthur, one of the only ports with a dry dock large enough to handle such an inspection. The dry dock resembles a barge open on each end with two high walls on each side. The LST is positioned over the dry dock after it moves to the center of the channel and is partially sunk before being refloated, lifting the ship for inspections.

The inspection includes an examination of LST’s ballast for thickness of steel. The LST also requires an inspection of its seven-foot propellers — weighing 1,500 pounds each — and work on its bow doors, plus a full paint job. The ship’s electronics also will be expected.

Of an initial crew of 40, only 10 remain at Port Arthur to complete smaller projects; LST-325 ship operations manager Jerry Wirth is among them. He describes a trip south plagued with bitterly cold weather, testing the ship’s energy capacity. Temperatures warmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, just in the nick of time when LST-325 passed by the USS Kidd, a Fletcher-class destroyer that saw action in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.

“In all honesty, I seldom knew where we were because I had one duty — to make sure this ship kept moving safely towards its destination. I was aware, though, when we sailed past the USS Kidd,” Wirth says of the vessel, which doubles as a veterans museum. “Most took the opportunity to brave slightly warmer weather and view the Kidd as we passed by. As our wake washed against her, I am sure that many pondered the shared legacy between us so close in distance yet across a vast expanse of time. It is a sobering reminder as to why we give our time and efforts to this mission: the legacy of others.”

Now that the LST has reached its destination, Wirth says the crew is settling into the daily rhythm aboard the ship, with 900 horsepower diesel engines constantly sounding. They will call Port Arthur’s shipyard home for the next five weeks.

“When the full crew departs the ship, there is a noticeable lag in the activity and noises aboard the ship,” says Wirth.

Wirth describes rainy conditions, but morning is greeted by breakfast from crewmember and chef John Jones. Eight to 10 hours a day are spent planning meetings, removing fuel and liquid, and performing physical inspections with the Gulf Copper marine repair team, which reports the ship is in better shape than many 10-year-old ships serviced at Port Arthur — LST-325 turns 81 on Feb. 1, 2024.

The crew also enjoys off-boat excursions for food and supplies. In five weeks, the other 30 members — who were bused back to Evansville when the ship docked — will travel back to Texas to help steer the ship’s return home.

“We are early in the evaluation process, so no surprises. But knowing this ship as I do, there will be more stories to come,” Wirth says.

The map shows detailed information about every business listed with a letter grade of “A” through “F.”

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BEAUMONT, Texas — The Beaumont Health Department created an interactive map that displays inspection grades of restaurants and places that sell food in the city.

The new map went live Thursday, December 7, 2023 and it shows detailed information about every business listed with a letter grade of “A” through “F.”

With the weekend around the corner and the holiday season in full swing, many Southeast Texans take the time to go out to eat at their favorite restaurants with their families.

Beaumont Health Director Kenneth Coleman says this took shows which restaurants to visit and others you may want to avoid.

The Beaumont Health Department has a mission.

“To prevent disease, protect the health of the community, and promote healthy lifestyles. When you go to the hospital you are an individual patient to that physician. Public health, the whole entire community is our patient,” Coleman said.

Better care needs better tools.

That’s why the Beaumont Public Health Department has implemented a new Interactive map that grades every food service establishment in Beaumont on cleanliness and safety.

“It’s kind of like the school grading system it’s a points system. It’s an inspection log with forty-seven items that we concentrate on,” he said.

Inspected businesses receive a letter grade of an “A” through “F.”

For instance:

Three points can be deducted for improper food temperatures, reheating procedures or food storage.

Two points can be deducted from unlabeled packaged food or lack of cold and hot water.

One point can be deducted for insect contamination or inadequate ventilation.

“We see a lot of time and temperature control, or handwashing,” Coleman said.

According to the map, businesses such as Sweet Basil, Crumbl Cookies and BB’s Seafood and Wings were all rated with a 90 or above scoring an “A.”

While businesses such as Tony’s Barbecue located off of Calder, The Rock’N Crab and Tokyo Japanese Steakhouse off of Dowlen Road were rated a 73 or lower scoring a “D.”

“Sixty-nine is failing. A 70 is a “D.”

Coleman says the new online tool will give the public transparency and a piece of mind.

“The community has been asking for it for a while. You have a right to know that ‘if I’m going here to eat, now it’s at your fingertips. Let me see what their last inspection was,'” he said.

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