Iowa Restaurant Inspections Found a Kitchen Last Checked in 2019

The latest round of Iowa restaurant inspections turned up a supper club in the small town of Garber whose previous inspection on record dated to November 2019 — nearly seven years earlier. When a state specialist finally walked in on July 31, the report listed no certified food protection manager, pizza sauce dated May 19, salsa dated July 17, an unidentified mold-like substance in a beverage cooler and potatoes stored on the floor.

Anchor Inn Supper Club was one stop in a sweep covering June 17 through Aug. 10, reported by Iowa Capital Dispatch and republished by KCRG and KWQC. Around 20 businesses were singled out — restaurants, two Hy-Vee stores, a hospital kitchen and an assisted living center among them. Two operators closed voluntarily the day they were inspected: Hacienda Vieja in Grimes and Sam's Fine Foods and Egg Rolls in Des Moines.

This isn't just gross-out reading. Federal agencies estimate 48 million Americans get sick from food every year, resulting in roughly 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. Almost none of those cases ever get traced to a specific meal. The violations in these reports are exactly the conditions that turn a night out into a bad week.

What Inspectors Walked Into

The mice were real. At Tommy's Café in Davenport on July 22, a Scott County inspector logged 13 violations and noted droppings in several areas, including around the perimeter of the doughnut prep area, along with a dead baby mouse under a shelf and multiple fly traps in use. A day later at Sippi's American Grill, also in Davenport, droppings turned up in the janitor's closet, under the dishwasher and beneath canned goods.

Pest control itself became a violation. Sippi's had two cans of insecticide not approved for food service. Indian Garden Bar & Grill in Bettendorf had an unauthorized insecticide too, plus raw chicken on the walk-in floor and an insect in a rice bucket. In Dubuque, Mason Dixon's basement bar had dead insects inside the soda-gun holsters.

The Number Behind Most of These Citations

Strip out the rodents and the real pattern is temperature. Under the FDA Food Code that Iowa follows, cold food must hold at or below 41 degrees. Between 41 and 135, bacteria like salmonella and listeria can double roughly every 20 minutes. Nearly every business on this list missed that line somewhere.

The Dairy Queen at Southern Hills Mall in Sioux City had hamburgers between 65 and 73 degrees. A Grinnell Hy-Vee had rotisserie chicken at 47. The Siouxland Senior Center coffee shop had a refrigerator running at 66 inside and a deli sandwich at 58. Hot food failed the other way — egg drop soup at a Des Moines Hy-Vee measured 124 degrees. Most of it went in the trash on the spot.

How Iowa Restaurant Inspections Actually Work

Read the list quickly and you'd conclude the Quad Cities has the state's dirtiest kitchens. That's not what it shows. It mostly shows who does the inspecting, and how thoroughly they write things down.

Who Shows Up at the Door

The state Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing owns food safety, but contracts the fieldwork out in several jurisdictions. Scott County, Linn County, the City of Dubuque and Siouxland District Health run their own inspectors. Scott County filed the most granular reports in this batch, which is why Bettendorf and Davenport crowd the results.

How Often a Kitchen Gets Checked

Licensed establishments are supposed to be inspected at least once a year, more often if they handle high-risk food or have a poor compliance record. Inspectors also come before a new place opens, after a complaint, and to confirm old violations were fixed. Anchor Inn's six-and-a-half-year gap shows how far that schedule can drift.

What a High Violation Count Means

These counts largely cover risk-factor violations — the ones tied to illness, not a chipped tile. La Herradura Mexican Grill in Bettendorf drew 14. Tommy's Café and Uchu in Des Moines drew 13 each, Thai Basil in Altoona 12, and three others 11 apiece. Double digits in one visit is genuinely unusual.

A Scott County inspector wrote that the person in charge at Soi 4 Thai in Bettendorf "did not know the basic knowledge of food storage, food temperatures or food safety handling procedures."

Why the Same Problems Keep Coming Back

Gog Dynasty Buffet in Davenport was cited for 16 violations in April. At the July 17 visit, coolers still ran warm, buffet pans weren't nested in ice, the dish machine had no detectable sanitizer, and staff were filling in sushi rice prep times before the rice existed. That last detail is the tell — paperwork built for the inspector, not the food.

Iowa restaurant inspections surfaced the same categories all year: moldy cheese and a roach in the noodles in March, moldy ravioli and dead rodents in April, insects in bottles in June. Different names, four or five identical failures. Equipment that can't hold 41 degrees is expensive to replace, and certifying a manager costs time, so both get deferred.

How to Check a Place Before You Sit Down

Iowa restaurant inspections are public records, searchable by business name or city through the state's Food Inspection Reports site. Pull two or three visits, not one — a single bad day happens to everybody, but a repeating pattern is a management decision. Then trust what's in front of you at the table.

• Buffet pans should sit down in ice, not resting on top of it, and hot items should visibly steam.
• Glance at the handwashing sink by the kitchen door: soap, towels, nothing stacked in the basin.
• Soda nozzles with buildup, sticky menus and grimy floors usually track with what's behind the door.

What's worth watching now is the follow-up. Both Hacienda Vieja and Sam's Fine Foods closed on their own to clean and repair, and Iowa requires inspectors to return and verify corrections — those revisit reports will post publicly in the coming weeks. And if a meal makes you sick, call your county health department instead of only leaving a review. A complaint is one of the few things that puts an inspector in a kitchen ahead of schedule.