On Sunday afternoon, a friend and I sat down for lunch at The Tavern at Phipps restaurant in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. We were having drinks and good conversation when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted an adult German cockroach crawling across the wall toward me.
I could see that the female roach was pregnant with a noticeable egg sack, which means papa roach was somewhere nearby.
I jumped up, grabbed my backpack and loudly told my lunch date we were leaving. “We’re leaving?” said my lunch date.
“Yes, we’re leaving! I don’t eat in restaurants infested with cockroaches!”
The waitress scurried over to our table to see what the fuss was about. She barely reacted when I pointed out the critter to her. She seemed more concerned that I was making a scene and alerting the other diners to the roach crawling feet away from their plates.
“I’m sorry about that. Have a good day,” she said dryly as she moved my empty chair to the side. No one on the staff made any attempt to kill the roach.
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Tavern at Phipps, located at 3500 Peachtree Rd NE in Buckhead, is a pricey restaurant that sits catty corner to Saks Fifth Avenue in the same upscale shopping mall as Gucci and Louis Vuitton, which is only steps away from the restaurant.
There is no excuse for live cockroaches in a pricey restaurant. If McDonalds doesn’t have roaches, I expect The Tavern at Phipps to do better.
Roaches can cause food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella food poisoning and Dysentery. One roach in a restaurant means there are as many as 800 roaches in the kitchen.
Tavern at Phipps received a passing grade of 90/A the last time the restaurant was inspected back in January.
The restaurant has at least 4 passing grades above 90 on the health department’s website. But the restaurant just lost two longtime customers.
