http://nrnfoodwriter.blogspot.com/2010/01/bad-day-for-flip-fans.html
In short, a health inspector just dinged NY's famous Pegu Club for serving a cocktail which included... horrors of horrors... raw eggwhite. Apparently, even the oft seen warning on the menu about raw eggs, the inspector said they need to use pasturized egg whites from this point forward.
I suspect that this isn't an isolated case, and that other bars around the world may have similarly encountered this problem?
That is quite the turn of events for the culinary world in general. I know I will be following the story very closely and I suspect many others will be as well...
I suspect this will get straightened out real quickly though...
On an interesting side note, a judge in Toronto ruled today that it is legal to buy raw, unpasteurized milk from farms. There are a few caveats, but it's a step in the right direction for food choice and personal discretion. It would also make it harder for health inspectors to require (in Canada anyway) that all ingredients be pasteurized, eggs included.
Darcy S. O'NeilArt of Drink
Here is an article I ran across a while back which appears to show a correlation regarding alcohol consumption reducing the potential of food poisoning:
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.html
-Robert
And Paul Clarke is jumping on this as well:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/01/serious-cocktails-nyc-health-department-crack.html
Posted by Paul Clarke, January 20, 2010 at 7:30 PM
The announcement came, as these things do nowadays, via Facebook. "So Pegu received a visit from the Health Dept. tonight," wrote Audrey Saunders, co-owner of Pegu Club in New York City and the recently opened The Tar Pit in Los Angeles.
Everything was in order, Saunders wrote in her Tuesday night post, until the inspector looked at the menu and took issue with one drink's list of ingredients. "[She] told us that...even with the warning we have printed on our menu about raw eggs, using raw eggs is a violation...and that we have to switch to pasteurized eggs in our cocktails."
(more...)
Inside of the comments to this article, there is a link to an LA Times article (from 2007) where the reporter describes their own experience with catching Salmonella from hollandaise.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/03/local/me-foodpoison3
My eyes popped open sometime after midnight and I knew I was in trouble.
This was not a typical bellyache. It radiated from my gut. Whatever it was, I could feel it in my toes. I tossed about, trying helplessly to fall back asleep.
This New York Times article just came up on the subject of raw eggs and the Pegu Club issue.
Things Get Messy When Bartenders Crack an Egg - NYT 02/02/2010
Quotes from the article:
"...Elliott S. Marcus, an associate health commissioner, seemed nonplussed by the fuss. The use of raw eggs is not illegal in the city, he said, and there is no cocktail crackdown. City regulations say “shell eggs or foods containing shell eggs” must be heated to 145 degrees or greater for 15 seconds, “unless an individual consumer requests” a preparation with raw egg. Even when customers order hollandaise sauce, “the server has to say this dish has a raw egg in it,” Mr. Marcus said. “The bartender has to make a positive, affirmative statement” if there is raw egg in a cocktail, Mr. Marcus said. “We think, if it rises to the level of risk, then you have to let the buyer beware.” "
" Although, he said, if a customer orders from a menu that identifies raw egg in a dish or drink, that can serve as notification. And that’s one reason why Ms. Saunders was so concerned about Pegu Club’s citation. The bar’s menu lists the MarTEAni ingredients as “Earl Grey-infused gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, raw egg white” and states that “we take the greatest care in the storage of our organic eggs. Please note, however, that like sushi, the consumption of raw eggs can be hazardous.” "
Via Michael Dietsch ( A Dash of Bitters ) on twitter
Thanks for posting that link Tony! This definately is an interesting overally story, and I'm curious as to where things will go from here. I would love to see some conclusive research done which can illustrate if there is an acceptable way to handle eggs in drinks (or food) which the health department can fully accept. Even if that means simply setting standards to how eggs are produced in an environment which eliminates salmonella as being an issue. In the UK they have some sort of certification, and certified eggs end up with a little stamp on them to show their quality. My assumption is that part of the point of this is to indicate that these eggs are "safely produced" or something? Do the UK health departments see these eggs as being free from salmonella?
This little science study is just a bit off-topic, because it addresses raw eggs and salmonella in aged egg nog, rather than in a cocktail that is immediately consumed. But it is still interesting information for those of you who may not have seen the video before.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10262
Wow Jerry, that's great! I was a little dissapointed however to see that the eggnog + alcohol sample taken immediately after mixing didn't show a more significant dieback in the salmonella, since that would have better cleared the path for raw eggwhite cocktails. I'd love to see a similar experiment with lemon juice added as well to see if the double whamy might have more of an effect?
But the fact that the dieback is basically total after three weeks of sitting is definately a good sign.
The immediate one did show a significant reduction as opposed to the booze free. The problem was that the booze free one was confluent (no way to tell colony number) whereas there were distinct colonies on the boozy one. Had they did a dilution series, they could have gotten microbiology lab-quality results out of it, but still, with my years of working with microbes, the results were visible. And the inoculum of bacteria they used in the experiment far exceeds what a contaminated egg would contain by a few orders of magnitude (it would reek horribly being rather cloudy and off colored if it were anything close).
Keep in mind that it takes a certain dose of live salmonella to get you sick. And what the alcohol and acid in cocktails doesn't do in, your stomach has a decent go at.
Cocktail Virgin blog
The egg-nog video is wonderful, I'm just a little disappointed that they chose not to drink the finished product.
This thread gets me thinking: What can we as bartenders due to reduce the risk of a salmonella-contaminated eggs translating to salmonella-infected guest?
Does egg freshness have anything to do with it? Are the giant agro-industrial or the local free range, grass-fed eggs more likely to be infected? How much does washing the eggs off before cracking help? Does an acidic environment have any effect? I have regularly heard the odds 'one in twenty or thirty thousand' thrown around, (and have thrown them around myself). How accurate is this? And what are the variables used in that statement? How do we create our own variables in the equation to make that ratio even bigger?
What do people think of pasturized egg whites? I know that "fresh is best", but does anybody have any specific thoughts or insights on using, or how best (if at all) to use pasturized? There is bulk pasturized egg whites, or pasturized in the shell (such as: http://safeeggs.com/), and there is getting your own pasturizing equiptment and doing it yourself.
What have folks tried with any success, and where do things fail?
My employer brought this one up with me recently. He came in and plopped down a carton of pasteurized egg white on the bar. Seeing me wince in pain, he reassured me: If I could tell the difference, and preferred the real eggs, we would stick with them. I whipped up two identical Ramos gin fizzes, (except for the egg of course), and he mixed them up, having marked the bottom of the glasses. They were very quite close, I must admit, but I ended up spotting the fake, and the real eggs remain. Having revisited them, I do not think they hold up as well in other drinks, where they make up a greater part of the volume, (sours served up). I have been told that the eggs used for pasteurized whites are of lower quality, those that do not get put into a letter category, ('grade A', for example.) Freshness is of course an issue. Once opened, the carton of egg whites urged me to use the contents within a week, which is less time then I will keep fresh eggs lying around.
Other than that, I would much rather work with the small-scale, local, organic farmers I know than giant, faceless agro-business. I know the former are taking care of their animals and the land that they work with, it always shows up in the finished product.