Wild Oaks 2 Facebook cover image.

Earlier this week, after receiving a complaint from a citizen, health inspectors paid a visit to Wild Oaks Grill 2, the semi-mobile barbecue shack that’s generally parked outside the Union 76 shack next to Pierson’s.

The inspectors found a lot not to like. The potato salad, coleslaw, chili, pasta salad, clam chowder and pastrami were all at unsafe temperatures. A bunch of gear was deemed to be not up to code, including the handwashing facility and the propane camp stove the business was using to warm up food. Wastewater was leaking across the 76 parking lot and pooling under the facility. The inspectors discovered that the trailer housing Wild Oaks Grill 2 was not taken back to home base every night, as is required by law.

Inspectors shut down the shack on the spot, and presented the business with a long list of things that would have to be fixed before it would be allowed to open again. The next day, Wild Oaks owner Robin Dunn posted a quietly defiant note to customers on Wild Oaks Grill 2 Facebook page:

Dunn was much more brazenly defiant this afternoon, when he spoke to  the Outpost this afternoon from his other barbecue operation, the original Wild Oaks Grill. He said that he and others are working to change the food handling laws in the state of California to prevent such shutdowns, and he vented his spleen at the caliber of people hired to check on health code violations. He’s not against government health inspectors in principle, he said, but he charged that the people who inspect him, at least, don’t know what they’re doing.

“These people do not have hands-on experience,” he said. “They are going by a book that is written by politicians and scientists. I’ve sent away more than I’ve let inspect me, because I’m not here to train them.”

Dunn said that he agreed with inspectors about the wastewater leak, and said he would be happy to fix that part of his operation. But he said he was ready to fight over almost every other aspect of the inspection report that shuttered Wild Oaks Grill 2. He said that the warm potato salad and the like were the result of a refrigerator left off, and that his employee was going to throw that stuff away anyway. The handwashing equipment was perfectly fine, he said — he didn’t know what inspectors were talking about with that. And he maintained that the outdoor propane campstove — a two-burner model, which mounts on its own legs — was a perfectly appropriate piece of equipment, despite the inspector’s assertion that it is a violation of the California Health and Safety Code.

As the Environmental Health inspection report notes, Dunn has the right to request a formal hearing on the matter within the next two weeks.

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