The changeover is expected to take another year. Meanwhile, city officials say restaurants appear to like the new inspections. Patrick Conway, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, says he mainly hears from members who are unhappy, and he has heard almost nothing about this.
But will it matter?
Even quarterly checks provide only snapshots of kitchens that rarely stop a "perfect storm" of events that experts say triggers most outbreaks.
"You need the pathogens present, you need, let's say, [an inadequate] temperature used, you need other steps along the way, the person who washed the lettuce didn't do the job," said Schaffner, the Rutgers microbiologist.