The launch of Dinegerous took the local food blogging world by storm, which, if you think about it, implies you were overrun by stormtroopers–so not such a good thing.

While it’s much easier to look for little red flags than pore over actual food inspection results, it’s overstating the case significantly to say that these are “the nastiest restaurants in Seattle” or that the map “finds the spit in your food.” That’s simply not what’s being mapped out.

Seattle Pulp, the spit hypothesizers, actually close their post by saying:

Though to be fair, anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows that long eyelashes go a long way in being forgiven when the health inspector comes in, so all of those “Spotless” reviews actually mean that there’s probably at least one hot manager.

Another problem is that health inspection rules are much more detailed than most restaurant workers are trained for. Getting a food worker card–take the test online for only $10–does not prepare you for health inspection minutiae. Then, you can also take issue with the health department’s claim that “Red critical violations are those food handling practices that, when not done properly, are most likely to lead to food borne illnesses.”

The health department is conflating, there, using its very precise standards and methodologies with the whole range of best practices. No one wants food-borne illnesses, but Dinegerous isn’t tracking that (which would be much more interesting, when it comes down to it). It’s tracking how well restaurants test to certain specifications.

As one of the more informed commenters at GeekWire wrote:

Love the name. Would use it if it was combined with reviews and took into account the violation, some are more meaningful than others and some of King County’s data is vague.  If the place is fabulous and no one is getting ill, I could care less if they keep their eggs in the refrigerator or not…a violation here, but not in many countries.

That may help you to understand why such popular “name” restaurants like How to Cook a Wolf, Bastille, and Kingfish Café sport red flags, or why crowded Capitol Hill brewery Elysian is flying the crimson pennant. Have these restaurants been poisoning diners wholesale without people knowing it?

A little red flag doesn’t tell you the whole story, and neither does clicking on it to see the infraction (though that may help to allay your fears). “Improper methods used to prevent bare hand contact with ready-to-eat foods”? The health department would close the kitchen in your home down in a heartbeat. Everything should be tongs and gloves–unless you’re a bartender, in which case you can bare-hand fruit to your heart’s delight, because, well, bars are different, aren’t they? Probably the alcohol kills everything.

There are sinks to be used for handwashing and sinks to be used for food prep, and said sinks have to be within a certain  distance and “convenient” for use. Meat can’t be stored above produce, even if you have vacuum-sealed it, frozen it, and encased it in concrete. It simply can’t be done.

Now, go into your freezer and measure the temperature at every square inch–at the back, near the door, around the seals. Is it a hot day, have you been in and out a lot, have you put something in to cool? There’s a lot of math involved in keeping a health inspector happy.

These are not mindless regulations, there’s thought behind them, and certainly there are restaurants that operate unsafely. We can all be glad that health inspectors are out there doing their jobs. I’m just suggesting your also use your judgment, in addition to a Google Maps mash-up. Cast your mind back to the latest few cases of e. coli: These days you are under threat because the food is contaminated before it ever arrives in a restaurant. Where’s the map for that?