Wolf’s Den Pizzeria was closed by the Tisbury board of health after the eatery stored food in an unpermitted walk-in refrigerator, though it was soon reopened.
The Beach Road pizzeria was closed on August 7 after Tisbury’s health department was contacted by the Oak Bluffs board of health that Wolf’s Den was using a walk-in refrigerator at a residential home in Oak Bluffs. Tisbury Health Agent Drew Belsky said the storage unit mainly contained meat.
“We closed them down and put an embargo on all foods [that coincide] with what Oak Bluffs found in that cooler,” Belsky said. Beyond the absence of a permit, Belsky noted it was uncertain what had been moved to the Vineyard Haven kitchen, and it was unknown whether the owners had checked the refrigerator’s temperature levels. It was also uncertain whether the refrigerator was up to code for a restaurant.
Still, Belsky said the pizzeria operators were co-operative. They also showed town health officials photos of the food they threw out from the refrigerator. Following a brief hearing on Tuesday afternoon, Wolf’s Den was greenlit to order food to prepare for a reopening, pending another inspection.
On Wednesday morning, August 12, when an inspection was scheduled to take place, a yellow placard and a letter from the health board were on the store window. The pizzeria was open again when The Times checked on Monday, August 17.
“Hopefully this is a learning experience for them,” Belsky said, noting food operators should come to the health board if they face storage issues.
Belsky said restaurant closures for violations are rare in town, but operators tend to clean up their act after enforcement. He noted that after a follow-up inspection in late July on Mikado, which was temporarily closed in December for code violations, Tisbury Assistant Health Agent Fred Hehre was “impressed by the improvements they made at the establishment.”
And Belsky said Wolf Den’s operators used the closure time “wisely,” such as repairing cracked floor tiles.
“They are trying to listen to what we had to say,” he said.
