Tuna on Rye, Hold the Latex

There's a controversy discussed in the Times about what type of gloves, if any, food preparation personnel should be using when handling food. Some people are highly allergic to latex, while some are concerned about the toxic chemicals in vinyl gloves. Use of bare hands, of course, risks passing on deadly microbes.

I hate the use of gloves in restaurants. Very often the preparer seems oblivious to the junk accumulating on the gloves, and thinks nothing of leaving wet smudge marks all over the bread as he finishes up your sandwich. A bare-handed preparer would wipe his hands off after handling the wet ingredients before wrapping up the sandwich. This peeve was echoed in the article: "When your hands are bare you can tell if you get something on them, and you immediately wash," said Debra Silva, who owns Clem & Ursie’s, a seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Mass. "But if you’re wearing gloves, you might have no idea that you’ve touched something dirty." Indeed.

Bare hands, regularly washed, is the best approach to food preparation.

But if you're real paranoid about food-borne illnesses and freaked-out by bare hands touching your food, avoid Sushi bars:

Many sushi chefs prepare raw fish with their bare fingers despite the rules requiring them to use gloves, tongs or paper. On a recent night the chefs at a Greenwich Village sushi bar scoffed at the idea of using gloves. One, who did not want to give his name for fear of getting the restaurant in trouble, said gloves would make it difficult to tell, by feel, if the fish was fresh. In that way, he said, gloves could make customers less safe. "You can’t make real sushi with gloves on," he said. It was the same story at a sushi restaurant in Midtown. "We’ve been doing it this way for 250 years," one chef said. "People who make the regulations just don’t understand."