Worst Inspection for "Boca's Best Pizza"

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Boca’s Best Pizza Bar on Palmetto Park in East Boca was temporarily closed by restaurant inspectors after 21 violations including 8 high priority. One of the “basic” violations may be the worst we’ve seen:

Basic – Dead roaches on premises. Approximately 30 dry rodent droppings inside of liquor room (former bathroom) in next door food prep room that is not on the original palms. **Warning**

And here are the 8 high priority ones:

  • Cooked potentially hazardous (time/temperature control for safety) food not cooled from 135 degrees Fahrenheit to 41 degrees Fahrenheit within 6 hours, pasta salad 51°, operator stated pasta salad prepped at 11:00 am, discarded at 4:40. Stop Sale issued. Lasagna 71°, operator stated prepped at 11:30 then kept at room temperature. Stop Sale issued. **Warning**
  • High Priority – Employee began working with food, handling clean equipment or utensils, or touching unwrapped single-service items without first washing hands. Next door prep room without a hand wash sink. **Warning**
  • Live, small flying insects in kitchen, food preparation area, or food storage area. In the kitchen and dish wash area near backdoor. **Warning**
  • Potentially hazardous (time/temperature control for safety) food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit, cheese 51°, pasta salad 50°, eggs 51°, cut tomatoes 50°, cooked chicken 50°, tuna salad 50°, ham 51°. Operator stated cooler flipped at 2:00 pm, iced down, 3 door True unit, front counter.Corrective Action Taken** **Corrective Action Taken** **Warning**
  • Raw animal food stored over cooked food. Raw she’ll eggs over cooked chicken wings in walk in cooler. **Corrected On-Site** **Warning**
  • Roach excrement present on certified food manager card and employee training certificates on wall to the kitchen entrance. **Warning**
  • Rodent activity present as evidenced by rodent droppings found. Approximately 7 fresh rodent droppings in the next door food prep room under the dry food storage shelve and 2 fresh under the food prep table in the same food prep room. **Warning**
  • Sewage / waste water on ground of establishment outside by the backdoor and coming out of the drain pipe near the backdoor running into the soil,rocks in the back alley. **Warning**

There were several problems with “Tastee Express” food trucks with emergency orders recommended on two of them.
Meza Mediterranean (Yamato near the train station) had 20 violations including 5 high priority.
On the bright side of our weekly report, the Tutti Frutti frozen yogurt place in Shadowood had a perfect inspection. Near perfect inspections included Chipotle on Palmetto near Powerline and Packy’s in Logger’s Run Plaza.
Other notables in this week’s report include:
Rise, a popular sushi place on SW 18th, and Orient House Express across the street, each had 16 violations including 3 high priority.
Hong Kong Palace on Powerline had 14 violations including 2 high priority on a call back inspection.
12 violations each for Four Seasons Restaurant on Glades, Bruce’s of Great Neck on 441, and Gramercy Bagels on Jog in Delray.
On Beracasa Way, Nino’s had 10 violations and Pei Wei had 9. Zingers had only 2 violations on a complaint inspection.
Rafina on SW 18th had 4 violations, all minor. Ciluffo’s, nearby, had only 1 minor violation but somehow managed to get a warning. We’re guessing that’s just paperwork.
Our full spreadsheet for the week is below:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/allinsp-8-16-2015.pdf”]

Top 7 Pizza Places in West Boca: Survey Results

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Seven West Boca pizza places topped our survey and the winner in a close call is Brooklyn Boys in Shadowood Square. Brooklyn Boys had the highest number of “Great” votes and the highest weighted average vote with 4.01. More details are below with full results at bottom.
The ratings were set up with 5 as Great, 3 as Average, and 1 as Terrible; 4 and 2 were not specifically identified but we would call them good and poor, respectively.
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Coming in a very close second was Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza in the Shoppes at Boca Grove on Powerline, with a weighted average of 3.99. Third place went to Mama’s Pizza and Pasta in Hampton Square (Kimberly between 441 and Lyons) with a 3.93.
Three others were in a virtual tie for fourth place including Thick & Thin in Sandalfoot Square (3.88), Domenic’s II in Westwinds of Boca near Home Depot (3.87) and Nino’s on Beracasa Way (3.86). In seventh place with a still respectable 3.80 was Stella’s in Boca Greens.
Mama’s is the only one of the top seven we haven’t tried yet but we hope to get there soon. We’ve tried the other six and like them all. Brooklyn Boys, Anthony’s and Thick & Thin can all be insanely busy at times. Anthony’s is the best sit-down experience. Thick & Thin is okay for sit-down if you can get a table. Stella’s has become our regular for delivery.
After Stella’s there was a significant drop to #8 Dominic’s (Glades near Boca Rio) with a 3.58. All others scored below 3.50.
Other notes about the survey and the results:
Several people mentioned Tony Dell’s on Sandalfoot Blvd. It closed a few months ago. In its place is the new City Boys Pizza which had a perfect zero violations in their licensing inspection last week.
We asked readers about East Boca pizza places in the comments at the bottom of the survey. The ones mentioned the most were Tomasso’s on Palmetto Park just east of I-95, Boca’s Best at Dixie and Palmetto Park, Tucci’s near Mizner Park, Renzo’s and Augy’s. In the rest of South Florida, Primanti Brothers in Fort Lauderdale was mentioned the most along with Mellow Mushroom (Delray and maybe West Palm Beach).
chuck-e-cheese-boca-raton
At the bottom of the survey Chuck E Cheese had by far the worst rated pizza with a 1.45. Over two-thirds of the 303 people who rated it called it terrible, and only seven rated it better than average.
Five others were rated worse than a 2:

  • Sweet Tomatoes (Beracasa) — 1.99
  • Papa John’s (Glades near Boca Rio) — 1.93
  • Domino’s (Boca Grove) — 1.81
  • Strike’s Bowling — 1.77
  • Pizza Hut (St. Andrews) — 1.75

The Pizza Hut on 441 near SW 18th squeaked by with a 2.05, and the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of “terrible” votes. National delivery chain Papa John’s on 441 near Sandalfoot had 299 votes with a 2.13. The Domino’s in Mission Bay had a 2.17.
In the mediocre category, The Meatball Room scored a perfectly average 3.00 in the survey though it only got a total of 129 votes. Rotelli’s in Mission Bay had 300 votes averaging 2.86. Mama’s NYC in Logger’s Run had a 2.47, though the ownership changed recently and it’s unclear how many votes were based on the previous owner.
Below is a PDF of the survey results, and at bottom is our spreadsheet:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Pizza-Summary.pdf”]
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Pizza-summary-edited.xls”]

City Boys Pizza Starts Off Perfect: West Boca Inspection Report

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Readers tell us the former Tony Dell’s on Sandalfoot Blvd. has reopened as City Boys Pizza. The name choice might be an homage to the popular Brooklyn Boys Pizza in Shadowood. We’re hearing good things about the place, and not just from readers.
Their licensing inspection on November 3rd was perfect – zero violations. That’s a good start.
Two other West Boca places had perfect inspections: The new Apura Juicery and Coffee House on Powerline south of Palmetto had zero violations in their licensing inspection on November 5th. And Monkey Joe’s in Logger’s Run was also perfect.
An honorable mention goes to one of the places inside St. Andrews Country Club, Lakeside, with only two minor violations.
Giovanni’s Pizza on Powerline had only three violations, though one was marked “high priority.”
It also looks like we’re getting another new Mexican restaurant – Casa Tequila is apparently filling the space left by Campagnolo on the south side of Glades just west of Boca Rio. Their licensing inspection on the 6th had only 4 minor violations.
la-luna
The worst of this inspection report was La Luna in Polo Club. They had 13 violations including 2 marked high priority, though they don’t look that bad to us.

  • Pesticide/insecticide labeled for household use only present in establishment. Owner discarded. **Corrected On-Site**
  • Potentially hazardous (time/temperature control for safety) food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Tilapia 44°, chicken 44°, squid 44°, shrimp 45°, salmon 44°, snapper 44°, chef lower temperature dial and moved tines to walk-in

Boca Greens Country Club had seven violations, and “Sushi U” in Spanish Isles (below) had 6 violations including a stop-sale for not having a time marking on a time-sensitive food item.
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Pizza Survey – Rank the Pizza in West Boca

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What do you think of the pizza places in West Boca? We have our hunches about which places are the most popular, but we want to hear from you.
We organized it roughly by zip code. Here’s a zip code map to give you a better sense of the locations:
west-boca-zips
The survey is below. If it’s hard to read on your phone, tablet or computer, you can also fill it out by clicking this link: SurveyMonkey.com/s/westbocapizza.
We did our best to get all the pizza places but we probably we missed a couple. There’s a question at the end where you can mention ones we missed.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

Thanks for doing the survey. Again, if it was hard to use on our website, you can try it at SurveyMonkey.com/s/westbocapizza.
We’ll publish the results in a few days.