Tipton County’s latest round of food and facility inspections turned up one clear outlier this week: Los Alebrijes, which scored a 79 on its Aug. 19 routine inspection.
Inspectors documented 12 violations, including:
- Hand sanitizer used instead of handwashing between taking a customer’s payment and serving food
- Roma tomatoes stored on top of a chest freezer, outside the walk-in cooler, alongside a dirty slicer and already-cut tomatoes
- A dirty cutting board on the can-holder shelving, with a knife left on top of it
- Large pots stored directly on the dish room floor instead of on shelving
- Dried food debris built up in the meat slicer/grinder’s feeder chamber
- No visible thermometer in the chest freezer used for ice cream
- A damp wiping cloth left out at the beverage station
- Dirty knives stored on the prep table by the walk-in cooler
- An ice scoop stored directly on top of the ice machine instead of in a clean container
- Food debris hanging from walk-in cooler shelving, and a sticky ice machine lid
- An employee’s drink, with a lid, stored inside a reach-in freezer
Follow-up inspections
Two other Tipton County establishments returned for follow-up inspections this week and left with dramatically improved numbers.
- Little Angels Learning Center (food service, Atoka): 95 → 100 on its Aug. 19 follow-up, with no violations found on the recheck.
- Casa Mexicana (Atoka): 92 → 97 between its routine and follow-up visits on Aug. 18, closing out issues with food thermometers, utensil storage, and general facility upkeep.
This week’s other inspections
- Hard Luck 13 Tattoo Studio (Atoka) — 100 — No violations.
- Vince Bell’s Lucky Devil Tattoo (Atoka) — 100 — No violations.
- TNT Bar B Que (mobile, Mason) — 99 — Missing drainboard at three-compartment sink.
- Theo & Roe’s Ice Cream Parlor (Covington) — 99 — Missing drainboard.
- Breakfast Cove LLC (Covington) — 99 — Improperly nested plastic cups.
- DOUBLE D’s (mobile, Atoka) — 98 — Broken freezer thermometer; missing drainboard.
- Little Angels Learning Center — Child Care (Atoka) — Approval — Water temperature briefly outside the required range in one room; corrected on site.
- Applebee’s-IHOP (Covington) — 93 — See below.
Applebee’s-IHOP‘s 93 came with the week’s most detailed citation: a rail-top cooler on the prep line couldn’t reliably hold temperature-sensitive food at a safe temperature due to a heat lamp positioned above it, prompting staff to voluntarily discard diced cucumbers, diced tomatoes, coleslaw and sour cream during the visit.
Other citations included flies entering through a propped-open back door, wet-nested plastic containers, plates stored food-side up, and a severely gouged cutting board. The health department has ordered a 90-day follow-up inspection to confirm the cooler issue has been addressed.
Why we do this
Any establishment that serves food, operates a recreational water facility, provides childcare, or offers personal services like tattooing or cosmetology is subject to routine health inspections – and those results are public record.
We publish them here because you deserve to know whether the public places where you spend time are meeting basic health and safety standards.
We’re not here to shame anyone; most establishments score well, and the ones who don’t are often actively working to fix it. We’re here to bring you a full, transparent picture.