Sine added, "We don't see a huge amount of requests going into health departments regarding health safety," so she questions if a demand exists for online information about inspections.

A final suggestion

The chief inspectors in both counties say people should not be overly concerned about eating at restaurants that have even sometimes high scores. They say they eat out themselves without worry.

"If it's open in the valley, I feel confident that it's a safe place to go," Delegge said.

Beebe in Utah County said, "The industry, for the most part, tries to do a good job. Some make better efforts than others. But no one intentionally fouls up. They know they need to offer a good product at a good price to get people back."

Still, he said despite generally good intentions by restaurant operators, "I'm fairly certain that if we didn't do inspections, they may fall back. I think they do a better job knowing that we might be coming in."

Sine with the restaurant association said, "Food safety is absolutely the number one priority for us."

She adds, "In the Utah restaurant industry, we serve over 2 million meals a day" and said she is not aware of any major occurrence of food-borne illness from it. "I think we do a darn good job of providing good, appetizing food."

Finally, for customers who may worry about sanitation, Delegge and Beebe both have an interesting suggestion that they say is almost always an accurate predictor of cleanliness in unseen areas: Visit the restaurant's bathroom.

"If they're clean, then odds are that the facility has a good sanitation system in place," Delegge said.

Lund adds that more and more restaurants are also preparing food in the sight of customers, which should give them more confidence. "It's a real transition in how they build facilities. You can watch and come to conclusions yourself."

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com