The Orchard Park Grill will be closing for three days on Feb. 28, Feb. 29, and March 1 for repeated health code violations, and it may not be long until it closes its doors for good.
Owner John Stathakis said he is currently looking for buyers to sell the business he opened in 2005. Since that time, the Orchard Park Grill has received numerous Board of Health violations, including but not limited to soiled food contact surfaces, rodent droppings, uncovered food products, raw food stored above ready to eat food, dish and bar soap machines not working, soiled drink dispensers and rusty beer taps.
Before coming to Watertown, the Belmont native and Waltham resident operated a deli in Waltham. The son of a “good cook,” Stathakis said serving food came naturally. His father, Demos, learned to cook from line chefs in a Canadian restaurant where he worked as a busboy after emigrating from Sparta, Greece.
When Demos Stathakis came to the United States, he switched industries and opened a laundromat in Belmont. John Stathakis worked there through high school and after graduation until he saw a vacant storefront up for rent in Waltham.
“I was coaching high school football and while I was driving home, I saw this little place for rent,” Stathakis said. “It just seemed like a great place to put a deli.”
Patronized mostly by a neighboring computer-hardware company and the Waltham Police Department, Stathakis said business was good. Then the 100-employee company relocated, Stathakis said, and it was time to move on.
“My buddy knew a guy who owned (the site of Orchard Park Grill), and we took over in September, 2006,” Stathakis said. “I wanted to keep it simple.”
Stathakis said he put roughly $15,000 worth of work bringing the bar up to code. He added televisions, replaced the flooring, bought new stools, painted the outside, replaced the indoor lighting, replaced the ceiling tiles, and put in new kitchen equipment. The old place was nothing “like it is now,” Stathakis said.
“It needed some real updating,” he said. “I have no idea how it ever passed inspection before.”
It wasn’t long until the Board of Health served Stathakis his first status hearing in January 2006 for health code violations, including not posting permits, soiled food contact surfaces, potentially hazardous food kept at an unsafe temperature, rodent droppings, uncovered food products, a malfunctioning bar dish machine sanitizer, soiled ash trays, and an incomplete consumer advisory.
While the items were corrected in the short term, a 2007 inspection found two of the violations repeated. One inspection in 2008 revealed five of the violations repeated, and a second inspection revealed nine violations, some repeated and some new.
Stathakis said he has always been accommodating to inspectors and the requests from the Board of Health to bring the establishment up to code. When the dish machine wasn’t working properly, he’d call the company to fix it. Sometimes they took longer than the Board of Health might have liked, Stathakis said.
“I lease to own the machines,” Stathakis said. “If something breaks down, I call the company up and have them come in to fix it, but if they tell me it’s going to be a week, what can I do?”
When a Board of Health inspector found expired seasonings, Stathakis said he threw them out. When they discovered beer residue buildup inside the taps, he called the beer company to replace the lines.
But a review of the establishment’s history reveals a total of 59 critical violations and 51 non-critical violations in the restaurant’s six years of operation. As a matter of policy, the Board of Health inspects food establishments twice each year, and in some cases they will return if recurring violations give them cause to keep a more vigilant eye. Since April 2008, the Board of Health has found both critical and non-critical violations every time they inspected the restaurant.
Still, Stathakis said he “runs a pretty good kitchen.” The violations appear worse than they are, he said. Stathakis also said he has been unfairly singled out.
“I try to keep the restaurant and the kitchen clean and do everything they ask me to,” Stathakis said. “I’m just trying to make a living.”
The father of three kids, and football coach at Watertown Middle School, Stathakis said he’s worked hard to be a good neighbor and give back to the community. For the past three years, the restaurant has sponsored a “Toys for Tots” drive that is distributed to children in Watertown, he said.
After six years in Watertown however, Stathakis said he’s had enough.
In recent months, Stathakis said he has not been able to pay the electricity bill, causing power outages that in turn, create more health code violations. He was also called to come before the Licensing Board for failure to show proof of workers compensation insurance. The hearing was continued until next month.
“They’re forcing my hand and they’re winning,” Stathakis said. “We’ve had a good run here.”
Stathakis said he didn’t want to announce a new buyer until the deal is complete, nor did he want to say when the restaurant would change hands. Stathakis did say he has “a couple things in mind,” for when that day comes, but it won’t be owning a restaurant in Watertown.
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