Posted on 12/05/2006 7:19:32 AM PST by Flavius
Staff writer
A steady flow of customers streamed Monday into a busy Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant, which reopened after being closed since last week because of a viral outbreak.
It both surprised and touched owner John Stage, who closed the business Thursday after Onondaga County health officials traced the gastrointestinal illness to his restaurant. Three health inspectors spent an hour there Monday morning after the restaurant was sanitized before giving the go-ahead for a reopening, Stage said.
Stage gave every customer who ate at the restaurant a $10 gift certificate after the meal.
"It's very heartwarming, and I'm incredibly grateful for all the support we've had," Stage said.
Customer Cory Kohberger, 26, drove from Ithaca to revisit the Dinosaur, even though he was one of the people who got sick last week.
"I told everyone I'd be the first one back," he said, adding that he got sick after eating chicken wings, which he ordered again Monday night. "Lightning doesn't strike twice."
The county's health commissioner, Dr. Cynthia Morrow, said complaints from people who got sick after eating at the Dinosaur reached 1,100 over the weekend but seem to be leveling off.
Preliminary tests ruled out food poisoning or bacteria. The culprit appears to have been an airborne virus, health officials said. That virus, which typically affected customers 18 to 48 hours after eating Dinosaur food, had symptoms that ranged from vomiting and diarrhea to chills and fever, said Morrow.
Those symptoms are similar to the Noroviruses, which have affected hundreds of passengers on cruise ships recently. About 23 million Americans each year suffer from the contagious ailment, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The results of the viral tests should be in later this week, she said. Officials may never know how the virus ended up at the restaurant, Morrow said.
That's virtually impossible to determine," but about two dozen employees who became ill with the same symptoms at the same time and continued to come to work likely unintentionally contributed to the problem, she said.
Work crews spent dozens of hours cleaning and sanitizing through the weekend, Stage said. Workers cleaned crevices and air ducts and took everything off walls to make sure it was germ-free, he said. Hundreds of pounds of prepared foods had to be discarded because it might have been contaminated with the virus.
Dinosaur Executive Vice President Larry Luckwaldt said crews "basically rebuilt the restaurant in two days."
It is unequivocally the cleanest restaurant in the United States now," he said. Closing down "was the best possible move we could make and the best possible way for us to defeat this."
Morrow and Gary Sauda, director of the department's environmental health division, said they'd both feel comfortable eating at the restaurant.
The die-hard Dinosaur fans said nothing could keep them away from the best barbecue in town.
"Seven of us all decided Friday, when we heard that they were closing, that we'd come as soon as they were open," said Keith Thomas, 42, of Syracuse. Thomas rides his Harley to the restaurant several times a week and has been a loyal customer for eight years, he said. "This place is full of great people and great food."
Pam Lundborg contributed to this report.
Sue Weibezahl can be reached at sweibezahl@syracuse.com or 470-3039.
I love the place but I might just wait a while before going back.
Sorry, but the Dinosaur is toast ... out of the 1100 that got sick how many do you figure have lawyered up by now?
I doubt you can sue over a virus. You can try but you won't get very much.
Naturally, the directions I got stank, so I walked about. A security guard at an office building I stopped at couldn't give me directions to the address I gave him. Then he asked where I was heading. When I told him, he said, "Why didn't you say so? Two blocks down, make a left, it'll be on your right. You can't miss it."
Yummy.
According to the CDC:
What is wrong with people who cannot understand that after you use the bathroom, you need to wash your hands?!?!?
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