Rats, roaches shut down gourmet grocery store Pusateri’s
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/1...e-pusateri’s-closes-due-to-health-violations/
Pusateri’s, Toronto’s premier family-owned purveyor of designer groceries, locked the doors of its flagship location on Avenue Road at 3 p.m. Thursday on orders from the Toronto Department of Public Health, the store’s general manager confirmed.
“The Avenue Road location is temporarily closed,” John Mastroianni, general manager of Pusateri’s, said on Thursday afternoon. “We have been ordered by public health to shut down in respect to public health violations.”
Pusateri’s opened on Avenue Road, just north of Lawrence Avenue in 1986, and has since opened two other locations, in Yorkville and Bayview Village.
The order to shut the store applies only to the flagship location on Avenue Road, known for its lavish cheese displays, exclusive chocolates, white marble and tile. The store, which grew from a fruit stand that Sicilian immigrants Salvatore and Rosaria Pusateri opened in 1963, is a good place to plunk down $100 for 30 grams of caviar, or pick up fiddlehead ferns, in season, for $14.99 a pound, which you might wish to season with black lava sea salt from Hawaii. A police officer stationed on Avenue Road helps shepherd Mercedes Benzes, Land Rovers and Lexus SUVs into the notoriously overcrowded parking lot.
Pusateri’s, whom many call by its nickname, “Pusie’s,” opened a second location in Yorkville in 2003; in 2006 after a nasty family feud, a judge ordered one side of the family to buy out the other, a purchase some observers estimated at $30-million. The chain today employs about 600 people, full and part-time.
Rishma Govani, a spokeswoman for Toronto Public Health, said in an email that, “TPH responded to a complaint today and has subsequently issued a closure order for the store due to poor sanitation and pest infestation. It is up to the operator to improve their services and arrange a re-inspection with the Public Health Inspector. The info will posted on Dinesafe this evening.”
Mr. Mastroianni said that Pusateri’s has turned all of its staff into cleaners to do a thorough scrubbing of the store, in hopes of reopening as soon as possible.
“We are all here and we will be here through the night,” he said. “There are maintenance issues and pest control and so on that has to be rectified. All our staff and our maintenance people are working as diligently as possible.”
Here is Toronto's dine safe app
http://app.toronto.ca/food2/DineSafeMain?userRequest=view_history&ESTABLISHMENT_ID=9012573
