County Restaurants File 12 Emergency Inspection Requests In One Week

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha County Health Department has received 12 requests for unscheduled restaurant inspections in the past five days, roughly triple its usual weekly volume, following a voluntary closure by an Oconomowoc Chinese restaurant over food safety concerns on October 14.

The department confirmed it has added appointment slots through early November and temporarily reassigned a second part-time inspector, Gary Thiessen, from his usual rotation covering gas station hot dog rollers to handle the overflow.

"We appreciate the enthusiasm," said Donna Vrabec, a department spokeswoman. "We would also appreciate it if people stopped calling the inspection line to ask whether their walk-in cooler is 'the kind that could end up on the news.'"

One Owner, Four Requests

Among the 12 filings, one stood out: Ray Palicki, owner of Palicki's Pizza & Subs on Sunset Drive, submitted four separate requests between October 14 and October 16, each two to three days apart. Each came with a handwritten note asking inspectors to "focus extra attention on walk-in cooler conditions." The fourth note added, in smaller print, "we replaced the gasket."

Palicki said he has owned the restaurant for 19 years and has never once requested an inspection before this week. "I saw the story and I thought, when's the last time anybody looked in that cooler besides me," he said. "The answer was March. I didn't love that answer."

He said he has since purchased a secondary thermometer, a laminated temperature log, and a padlock for the cooler door that he does not intend to use but likes having nearby.

A Surge, Not A Crisis

Health officials were careful to note that none of the 12 requests followed a complaint, illness report, or any indication of an actual problem. All were purely voluntary, and the department said early results have turned up nothing worse than a mislabeled bleach bottle at a Main Street deli and one walk-in at a Waukesha diner running four degrees warmer than ideal, which was corrected on the spot.

"This is, structurally, a good problem," Vrabec said. "Owners want to be inspected. That is not a sentence I get to say very often. Usually it's the opposite sentence.

"I'd rather spend my Tuesday afternoon waiting around for an inspector than spend it reading my own restaurant's name in a headline."

— Ray Palicki, owner, Palicki's Pizza & Subs

The department said it does not anticipate the surge lasting past mid-November, when it expects requests to return to their normal pace of roughly one to two per week, mostly from new restaurants seeking their initial license inspection.

Inspector Thiessen's New Rotation

Thiessen, 44, has worked for the county for 11 years and said the reassignment has been a change of pace. "Gas station hot dogs are a known quantity," he said. "You know what you're going to find. This week I found a guy who alphabetized his spice rack specifically because he thought I'd ask him to. I didn't ask him to. But I appreciated it."

Thiessen said he has completed eight of the 12 requested inspections so far, with the remaining four scheduled through the first week of November. He said Palicki's fourth request, the one about the gasket, was technically unnecessary since the department had already cleared the cooler on request number two, but he came out anyway.

"He asked nicely," Thiessen said. "And the pizza's good."

The department said it will reassess staffing again in December and has not ruled out keeping a second part-time inspector on indefinitely if request volume stays elevated. For now, Vrabec said the office's advice to the public is the same as it was before the Oconomowoc closure: if a restaurant's cooler ever gets a request, it's not information, it's a rumor, and the only reliable source is the inspection report itself, posted at the health department's front counter and, as of this week, checked far more often than usual.