Piccadilly earns 98 points after failing with a 26 in August

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Filthy conditions inside the Piccadilly Cafeteria at South DeKalb Mall have been cleaned up.

The DeKalb County Board of Health released before and after photos from inside the kitchen and the images are stunning.

“It is a marked improvement, tremendous improvement,” DeKalb County Board of Health Spokesperson Eric Nickens said.

Nickens called the Piccadilly Cafeteria clean-up process a team effort.

“We are not going to allow that establishment to reopen until the threat is mitigated as far as food safety,” Nickens said.

Back on Aug. 22, Piccadilly at South DeKalb Mall in Decatur failed with 26 points and a “U” for unsatisfactory. The report said there were live insects, crawling inside the flour bin, live roaches in the kitchen and rodent droppings in the storage area.

“Our environmental health inspectors do see a lot on a daily basis. But the score of 26 is probably one of the lowest that we have issued in quite some time,” Nickens said.

Since that day, Piccadilly has remained closed and management has been working hard to make significant improvements.

“What we have done is we have upgraded our equipment, we have done quite a bit of plumbing work, wall repair. We have sealed, any entrances to the building of unwanted guests, let’s say,” Piccadilly Regional Manager Cain said.

In addition, management told Atlanta News First they have replaced the flooring and sealed it with epoxy. As a result, Piccadilly earned 98 points on a reinspection and is back open for business.

“It feels like a brand-new kitchen and looks like a brand-new kitchen. And we’re glad to be serving the DeKalb community once again,” Cain said.

The DeKalb County Board of Health tells me they plan to hold a food safety town hall in the next couple of weeks for all of the restaurants at the mall to make sure this never happens again.

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