Patrick Hansell
The manager of Hana Sushi & Teppanyaki said the restaurant remedied its health code violations.
Several restaurants in Easton popular among Lafayette students were found to have violated food safety regulations during inspections this past month. On Cattell Street, Hana Sushi & Teppanyaki had 11 violations and the new College Hill Café had four.
Restaurants undergo food safety inspections by the City of Easton Bureau of Health at least once per year. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s website, “any inspection is a ‘snapshot’ of the day and time of the inspection. An inspection conducted on any given day may not be representative of the overall, long-term cleanliness of an establishment.”
Among the food safety violations from Hana were a lack of “adequate knowledge of food safety” from the “Person in Charge,” observed food storage containers on the floor, lack of a log of the pH of sushi rice and “chicken … observed thawing in standing water in the prep sink, which is not an approved thawing method,” according to the website.
Just the year before, Hana only received two violations.
Eddie, the manager of Hana who did not provide his last name, said that food containers have since been stored off the floor in the freezer, that the sushi log pH log has been corrected and that chicken has been thawed in a different container since the inspection.
“I like [Hana]. I never had a problem with it,” Avani Sukhtankar ‘26, who has visited Hana several times, said, noting that the restaurant always looked “pretty sanitary.”
Alessa Pescatore ’26 said that Hana’s health code violations made her wary of going there.
“It did make me really nervous,” Pescatore said. “I mean, I feel like it would make anyone nervous.”
Ethan Coffin ‘25 used to visit Hana a couple of times a month but is “no longer a patron of Hana” because of the health code violations.
“I am not currently committing to never eating there again, but I would have to hear that things have changed before I go back to the restaurant,” Coffin wrote in an email.
The food safety violations observed at College Hill Café were food being stored above proper temperatures in refrigerators, lack of a “written consumer advisory” for eating raw or uncooked foods and “the food manager’s certification … not posted for public viewing,” according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s website.
Teressa, the manager of the restaurant who did not provide her last name, confirmed that all the refrigerators were working properly and that the proper advisories and certificates had been made visible on the menu and in the front of the café, respectively.
Kathryn Wright ‘25 has been to College Hill Café several times since its opening, and “[loves] that place” and will “go just as often [to the café] as before” after being informed of the violations.
“I’ll still keep going, as long as there’s not rats,” Wright added.
Annelise Przybylak ’26 contributed reporting.
Correction 9/22/23: A previous version of this article misspelled the surname of Avani Sukhtankar ’26 as “Sukhtanar.”
Correction 9/22/23: A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of Kathryn Wright ’25 as “Kathyrn.”