The recent developments at the popular Asian restaurant are sparking new interest in the food inspection process.
People usually go to a restaurant to eat the food not to talk about it. However, XO Asian Cuisine opened the door to an important conversation by shutting down.
"A lot of people want to understand our process, you've seen the headlines," says Janine Johnson, a sanitarian specialist at the Kent County Health Department.
She's talking about the food inspection process. Each of the nearly 2,000 restaurants in Kent County average two unannounced inspections every year. The Kent County Health Department has ten staff members that do food inspections.
It's usually one staff member per restaurant inspection.
"The purpose is that we want to actually see them in their natural state, see them operating as they would as though we were not there," Johnson said.
Health officials check everything from food temperature to employees handling of food, and of course, the cleaning procedures, too.
Johnson shared a story about one of the worst cases she's seen in her fifteen years at the health department, which happened a few years back.
"A sewage back up into a facility and that would be considered an imminent hazard and we would shut the facility down immediately," Johnson said.
Sometimes, like with XO Asian Cuisine, a restaurant is temporarily closed until it corrects the violations. Generally speaking, Johnson considers it like the Golden Rule.
"If I'm not going to eat there, I certainly would not want the public to do so," Johnson said.
Johnson encourages anyone who is expressing concerns about restaurants on social media to let the health department know.