AMHERST — Customer complaints lodged over the last 10 months against Lone Wolf Restaurant, including one in which bugs were allegedly discovered in omelets, has forced the town to take corrective action to fix the problem.
That action is directed more at the building’s out-of-town owner than the restaurant, which health officials say is routinely inspected and is a safe place for people to eat.
The Lone Wolf Restaurant, which opened in 2004, is located in a 150-year-old downtown building at 61-63 Main St. Owner Rob Watson says he has always recognized the challenges the building’s age poses in being a safe place to prepare and serve meals.
Even though he has long been aware that leaks at the rear of the building and on its roof were creating moisture problems attractive to pests such as cockroaches — and that food products abandoned and decaying in the basement of an adjacent restaurant space were exacerbating the problem — Watson said he has been unable to get building owner Ting-Wei Tang, of Bristow, Virginia, to address these concerns.
Instead, Watson undertook his own efforts to combat cockroaches by paying for monthly exterminations of the bugs, which he more recently stepped up to twice monthly exterminations and quarterly in depth cleaning of his space.
“I’ve been incredibly proactive with pest control in the building since day one,” Watson said.
Despite his efforts to minimize pests, last December the Health Department received an email complaint from a woman who wrote that her daughter and her daughter’s friends “went to a restaurant in Amherst called The Lone Wolf, their omelets came with bugs in them and one of the girls found a live bug in her napkin.”
This, along with other customer complaints filed since then, have set in motion work by town officials to ensure corrective measures are taken on the building, and that Lone Wolf can remain open and safe for customers.
Lone Wolf is open daily for breakfast and lunch, with an extensive menu of omelets, crepes, pancakes, eggs and home fries.
Health and Community Services Director Julie Federman said any complaints prompt immediate action, with an inspector going to a restaurant to check on the problem, which could range from bugs seen in the food to someone becoming ill from a meal.
Since the initial complaint was lodged, the Health Department has found Lone Wolf remains safe to continue to do food service, Federman said.
Typically, two inspections are done each year, which can be supplemented with these complaint-based inspections. But with more than two complaints made against Lone Wolf, the inspections have become a formal investigation.
The problems at Tang’s building have not been a surprise to inspectors, Federman said, but reaching him has not been easy. She describes him as “a hard person to find.”
“We’ve been concerned about a lot of building issues that need to be taken care of,” Federman said. “To mitigate the moisture issues, you have to treat the entire building.”
Efforts to reach Tang by phone and email were unsuccessful.
While Watson has been picking up the cost of the monthly exterminations, the Board of Health recently ordered Tang, who was in town Oct. 14, to treat the entire building weekly for the next three months.
In addition, at a health board hearing Oct. 17, William Rock of Pelham told officials that he was hired as Tang’s representative. Rock will oversee repairs that are supposed to be complete within the next three weeks that will get moisture out of the building, Federman said.
“We’ve really turned a corner here,” Federman said. “A lot of progress has been made.”
Watson said he is pleased to see the building finally being addressed, and credits Susan Malone, a town inspector, for coming to the 1870 building regularly to make observations and recommendations.
Much of the work inside the restaurant Watson has done on his own, including installing new floors and floor drains in the kitchen and a jettison tank in the basement that takes water out of the building. He also purchased a dehumidifier.
Years of old materials from former restaurants next door, now the site of Himalayan Friends Corner Restaurant, has been removed. This is considered “harborage,” Federman said, and will ensure that cockroaches are no longer finding an attractive environment.
“Pests of all kinds like places like that,” she said.
Watson said one frustrating element is that unlike the rental registration that requires local property managers be available so that corrective actions can be taken immediately, the town has no similar rule on the books for the owners of commercial properties. This absentee landlord syndrome, Watson argues, has allowed the problems to linger.
Even though the restaurant has been able to continue serving meals daily, since Sept. 12 Watson’s catering license has been suspended, meaning that Lone Wolf cannot use its own kitchen. When doing a weekend fundraiser for Cancer Connection, Watson catered this out of the nearby Black Sheep Deli kitchen.
Federman said the reasoning for suspending that license, and not closing the restaurant, is that bugs and their eggs could migrate from the site should the catering business prepare food in the same kitchen and then transport it to another location.
“It was a very cautious move to do that,” Federman said.
Before the catering license is returned, Federman said inspectors will need to observe a decrease in moisture and pests.
Watson said his dignity as a business owner and a Pioneer Valley chef for more than 30 years is at stake.
“I am being proactive and doing what I can to make it work here,” Watson said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com