Food Safety Report - Hard Eight BBQ, The Colony Texas

5300 Texas 121, The Colony, 75056 Texas, United States

Hard 8 Colony has been one of our favorite restaurants but the last 2 times I have eaten there I have ended up ill. The latest visit was December 23, around 12:45pm. I ordered 3 ribs and a baked potato.I used 2 butter pats and 1 sour cream on the potato. I also got a self serve side of beans which I only ate a few of. My son and husband also ate there but had ordered something completely different and used beans out of a different self serve than I did. We had dinner with many friends at another local restaurant for dinner but no one in the party got sick so we are believing it was from Hard 8. I began to feel ill around 5am on December 24th. Horrible cramping, abdominal pain, and nausea to the point of almost vomiting. Gurgling stomach, bloating, diarrhea, upper and lower abdomen pain, belching and cramps followed all Christmas Eve. I had a few bouts of vomiting as well. Followed the bland diet rule all Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but even eating rice, bananas, and applesauce results in painful stomach and indigestion. Even today I am still having stomach issues.
As someone who knows a lot about food safety (we own a fast food chicken restaurant and have been through Serv-Safe training), we have found ourselves increasingly aware of violations at Hard 8 The Colony. They do not follow FIFO (First In First Out) when replenishing product on the open pits, not once in our many visits have we seen temperatures being taken, cutting boards and cutlery being sanitized, or cross contamination being addressed. The “holding cabinets” in the pit area for cooked foods have a sign that says “product must be at 160*”, but even when we see them take product out of his cabinet (it’s righr in the area where customers can see) they do not check temperatures before adding to existing product, and they do not rotate food as stated above. We even said to ourselves on the walk up to eat the day of December 23rd that if anyone got sick we would no longer be eating at this establishment since we felt the quality and cleanliness had suffered in the last few months.
Thank you for listening. | Symptoms: Diarrhea, Nausea, Vomiting, Bloating, Stomach Pain, Cramps, Burping, Migraine, Indigestion