NATCHEZ — Take any restaurant and within minutes the eye will inevitably find that familiar piece of paper on the wall — the restaurant rating.

Whether taped up to wall or hanging in a frame, these pieces of paper containing letter grades say a lot about a restaurant.

But sometimes the grade doesn’t exactly reflect the quality of food and the facility once you take closer look.

The A, B and C ratings health inspectors give to restaurants hinge on many things, but to get an A, an establishment must not to be found to have any violations.

And violations can be pretty simple things.

Click the following link to view all 2008 inspection reports of restaurants in Adams County. Restaurant Report Card

The Cock of the Walk has had a steady B rating over the past year under inspector Dorothy Matthews.

One line item that separated the restaurant’s rating from an A was the paddles they use to freeze water, Manager Erich Clark said.

The paddles are normally stored on shelves, but Matthews wanted them stored in buckets, Clark said.

The Malt Shop recently received a B also, and owner Gloria Neames said it’s the little things, too.

She said it could be as simple as a bottle of peroxide could be sitting on a counter and that could get points knocked off.

“It’s nitpicky things,” Neames said.

But anything that is notated as a critical violation can be immediately corrected on site under the supervision of the health department representative.

Neames said, like in the case of the peroxide bottle, that’s exactly what will happen.

“Whatever we need to do, we always do,” Neames said.

Other things that have to be kept in order are proper temperatures in fridges and freezers and a certain level of chemicals in dishwashers.

“It’s kind of like keeping the chlorine up in a swimming pool,” Clark said.

For temperatures, Neames said her restaurant was impeccable.

“All of our temperatures are excellent,” she said.

Director of Environmental Health at the Mississippi Department of Health Tim Darnell said another example would be having no paper towels at a hand sink.

In order to get a C rating, critical violations must be found that are incapable of immediate correction or the business owner refuses to make the correction.

“It is usually a construction item or an example of a classic item would be evidence of pests, bugs or rats — something that requires some attention on that part of the facility.”

Once given a C, the restaurant must fix the problem within 10 days and then they are re-inspected.

If the facility still does not correct the problems, steps are taken to suspend the owner’s operational license.

C’s are also issued if a restaurant has repeated a critical violation from one inspection to the next, even if the problem was corrected immediately on site.

The Malt Shop has never failed an inspection and Cock of the Walk has only failed once.

Clark said this is because when Matthews first started as an inspector, the handbook had changed, causing them to fail. But when she came back to review, Cock of the Walk had fixed everything.

“Once we got it taken care of it’s been fine ever since,” Clark said.

For a business to be shut down there would have to be an imminent health threat, Darnell said.

“If there is a severe pest infestation with evidence of the pests getting into the food, or if there was sewage backing up into the facility, that would be considered an imminent health threat,” he said.

Up until 2007, restaurants were inspected on a pass-fail system, though the standards were the same.

At that time, however, they decided to go with the graded system that’s currently in place.

“It was just to make it a little more consumer friendly,” Darnell said. “We use the same standards but people seem to understand it a little better.

“It also gives the facility an incentive to make an A. What we would like would be for us to walk into a facility and it not have any critical violations.”

The Malt Shop and the Cock of the Walk do everything they can to meet the standards.

“We try very hard to be in compliance,” Neames said.

And she never stops striving for the best.

“There’s always room for improvement,” she said.

Clark said there is a constant cleaning vigilance at his restaurant.

“Since we use so much grease we just have to clean constantly,” he said. “We just make sure everything is done up and kept up.

“It’s an ongoing process.”