A San Francisco health inspector walked into Mission Curry House on Monday morning, opened the two ovens sitting under the cookline, and found live and dead cockroaches on the walls and surfaces inside. Ninety-five minutes later, the Nepali-Indian mainstay at 2434 Mission Street had a suspended health permit and a CLOSED placard on its door. And the ranges bolted to the top of those same ovens? They were in use at the time.
What the inspector found
The routine inspection began at 11 a.m. on July 13 and ended at 12:35 p.m., according to the report filed by Environmental Health Branch inspector Katie Dea of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Along with the roaches in both ovens — described as greasy, dusty and used as storage — Dea documented a live cockroach in the trash room crawling into a gap in the wall above a storage shelf, which was sealed on the spot.
The pest problem wasn’t the only thing that got flagged. Inspectors found a large, deep stock pot of cooked orange sauce sitting at 58°F, two deep containers of onion sauce at 48°F, and two more of tomato sauce at roughly 54°F — all in a walk-in cooler measuring under 41°F, all cooked the day before. Staff told the inspector the sauces had been in the unit since; the food was voluntarily condemned and destroyed on site, and the operator was cited under the state’s rapid-cooling rules, which require potentially hazardous food to drop from 135°F to 70°F within two hours.
Rounding out the report: debris on and below the dishwasher, buildup in prep cooler gaskets, a cellphone and medication stashed on a shelf near clean plates, and a ceiling outside the kitchen’s swing doors with bubbling paint and a steady stream of liquid dripping onto the floor between the wait station and the glassware storage. The operator called for repairs and for pest control during the inspection. The last professional pest service on file at the restaurant was in early June.
What it takes to reopen
Reopening isn’t a matter of sweeping up. Before requesting a reinspection, the operator must hire a licensed pest control operator, treat both ovens and the trash room plus the entire premises, and email the pest report directly to the inspector — the same procedure that has governed every recent SF roach closure. The restaurant also has to follow the pest operator’s re-entry instructions, sanitize all food-contact surfaces, set monitoring traps, seal remaining cracks and crevices, and stop the leak in that ceiling…