Dan Mattern spends a lot of his life walking into buildings and surprising people.

Mattern isn't bearing good news, or bad, necessarily.

It depends on you.

"He never lets us know when he's coming," said the general manager of a Bismarck restaurant.

Sometimes Mattern is greeted with smiles. Sometimes not.

"It depends on the place," said Mattern, a former microbiologist who has spent the last 25 years doing restaurant inspections and other duties for Bismarck's Environmental Health Division of the Fire and Inspections Department.

In December 2003, there probably wasn't a lot of smiling when he strongly suggested that a restaurant close down voluntarily while needed improvements and clean-up were accomplished. It did, after a threat of a forced closure and threat of a license suspension through a public hearing process.

But on a recent morning, there were some smiles as he walked into a different restaurant - a popular Bismarck restaurant that has a reputation for fine inspections.

"We're normally ready at all times (for a possible inspection)," said the restaurant's general manager.

So, Mattern, who is persnickety at home and here - "My tendency is to be careful around food. My family … would attest to that," - starts his inspection.

It will take about one hour.

He introduces himself to a restaurant manager who has never accompanied an inspector before and she asks him what she should do. Mainly, it's watch, listen and learn as Mattern talks to her in the gentle tones that Mr. Rogers would use. But the subject isn't friendship and sharing.

The point is how not to share - things like food-borne diseases.

As he walks, he reels off scientific facts and food code requirements.

First, he walks by the salad bar. He wants to make sure that the food and dinnerware is protected, lights are shielded, and employees working in that area are using gloves and utensils when working with food.

"Hygienic practices and failure of proper hygiene is biggest cause of food-borne illness," he said.

Then he walks to a sink outside the kitchen to wash his hands.

"I should be setting an example," he said. "I expect them to wash their hands."

There should be paper towels to dry hands, and he checks under the sink to make sure utensils or other items aren't being stored next to a sewer line. Then in the kitchen, he checks the ice bin for such things as to make sure there is no mold in the ice pan and that the ice scoop is stored properly. Ice is considered a food and has to be treated in the same way as other foods.

He compliments the manager for the milk machine. The milk containers' nozzles were cut at an angle instead of straight across, which will prevent the milk from coagulating at the tips.

"It's done wrong half the time," he said about milk machines in other restaurants.

He notices that the chipped Formica counter underneath the milk machine, something he was concerned about during his last visit, is gone, replaced by a stainless steel counter. That's a good thing.

He checks the temperature of the soup in holding containers, which has to be 140 degrees or higher. It is.

More new things. The restaurant has a new industrial dishwasher. He checks the temperature of the water by putting a temperature-sensitive strip on a butter knife.

"We want the temperature of the water hitting the dishes," he said.

The strip changes color if the hot water reaches the right level. Surface temperature needs to be at least 160 degrees. It is.

Then he sees the first of a couple of minor problems.

The plastic guard inside the top of the microwave is missing. Keeping the microwave clean without it is harder.

There are two types of violations, critical and non-critical. This is non-critical violation number one.

The manager tells him they'll probably get rid of the microwave. It's one they don't use anyway.

Then Mattern checks the walk-in cooler to make sure of several things including that there is no meat stored above produce and that it has a thermometer and that containers holding prepared foods can cool fast enough by being stored in the right quantities - nothing deeper than 4 inches.

"The cooler looks very good," he said.

Then he walks downstairs and finds the restaurant's one and only critical violation for the day.

There is a hose attached to a sink faucet that doesn't have a backflow prevention device. That could potentially create a major problem.

Mattern said that if there had been contaminated water in that sink and at the same time there had been a sudden change in the water pressure - such as if a water hydrant was suddenly put into use - the contaminated water would be sucked into the hose, through the restaurant's water system, and eventually into the city's water system. Not allowed.

Mattern said those things do happen. He investigated a situation once where a hotel was filling its swimming pool and ran into a major problem. The water was green and had the consistency of antifreeze. Turns out it was a backflow situation. Filling the pool had caused a change in water pressure. When that happened, a corrosion-prevention additive that had ethanol glycol in it - the same active ingredient in antifreeze - was sucked through a line attached to the boiler and ended up in the pool.

"If there had been someone swimming in the pool, a small amount of water could have killed them," he said.

The manager immediately disconnected the hose and the hose has been thrown away. They never found out which employee did it. "I guess it was a ghost," the manager said later.

Then the next problem, non-critical violation number two.

In the hallway, catering containers were being stored upright. They needed to be inverted to prevent dust contamination. "That was a problem before (at the last inspection)," he told the manager.

In a freezer, he noticed a tray of meat on the floor. "That should be off the floor," he said. But he could tell from years of experience this was a recently arrived shipment and the city's code gives the restaurant 12 hours to get it off the floor. So they're OK for several more hours.

In another area, plastic cups and paper plates were covered. That's good. In dry food storage, the items were protected by shelving above it. If there hadn't been shelves, the food would need to be kept in boxes.

Then it's back upstairs, to check the food prep and cooking areas.

He checks the cleanliness of surface areas, the meat slicer, the can opener and such, and picks out a long sharp knife from a bunch in a container to make sure it's clean. Sometimes dirty knives end up back with the clean.

Then, non-critical violation number three.

The splash area above the stove is dirty.

Non-critical violation number four: a door seal is torn in the kitchen cooler.

He puts a chemical-test strip in a bucket of sanitizer where cleaning rags are to be kept - and the strip shows the solution proves to be at the right strength level.

He typically asks manager questions to make sure they know their stuff. Her answers satisfy him, plus she is a graduate of the Serve Safe Course, which means she probably knows what she needs to know. If a manager gives a wrong answer, that's a critical violation.

Then he goes to the restaurant's bar to check cleanliness, make sure there is a supply of single-use towels, make sure the ice scoop is properly stored and make sure the pint of cream kept in the cooler isn't out of date.

It's over.

Mattern then sits down and goes over what he has found. The critical violation needs to be taken care of immediately, which it was. For the non-criticals, the restaurant has 90 days.

"The cleaning overall looked pretty good," he told her. "Overall, food storage looked very good … There's lots of improvement since last time."

And best of all, when he walked out the door, the restaurant stayed open.

"I felt pretty good about it (the inspection results)," the general manager said.

Now he can smile.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com.)