A South Russell Village restaurant is facing possible closure if it does not resolve multiple health code violations soon, said Geauga Public Health officials Nov. 19.
A South Russell Village restaurant is facing possible closure if it does not resolve multiple health code violations soon, said Geauga Public Health officials Nov. 19.
During its regular meeting, the Geauga County Board of Health voted in favor of sending a letter giving Hunan by the Falls, at 508 Washington St., a two-week warning before its license would be suspended.
Violations have been ongoing since January, Environmental Health Director Dan Lark said at the board meeting.
“We have a restaurant that we’ve been having some issues with and we’re bringing it up as we’re at the point where we’d like your permission or approval to issue them a notice to suspend their license if they don’t get things fixed,” Lark said, adding generally, restaurants fix their violations before hitting this point.
“Usually, what we do when we get to this point where we’ve had multiple inspections, reinspections and then we get to the point where we bring them in for an office hearing where we sit them down and I sit down with them and with the inspectors and we have a discussion about, you haven’t gotten better, you need to get better. If not, this is the first step of the legal process to suspend or revoke your license,” he said.
After the office meeting, officials held a followup inspection, which the restaurant failed, Lark said.
He showed the board photos of the violations, which included a rack of ribs in a hand sink; breaded chicken stored in a cardboard box, which is not considered sanitary; chemicals stored in the kitchen; food stored in bags on the floor of a walk-in cooler; raw chicken sitting above vegetables; and multiple utensils sitting in stagnant water.
“The problem is, these are all repeat violations at this location,” Lark said. “In itself, each one is not super terrible, but it’s the point of … they’re not correcting themselves.”
Unless there is an imminent health threat, the legal process requires the board to send a letter giving two-weeks’ notice of its intent to suspend the restaurant’s license, which the restaurant may appeal, Lark explained.
After that, the board sends the actual suspension notice and another two-week notice, he added.
The full process takes about a month, he said.
With the exception of the most recent inspection following the office meeting, the restaurant has not been aware when the health inspector is coming, Lark said.
“Dan and I talked today. I want the team to go back before Thanksgiving so that there’s a check before now and then,” GPH Administrator Adam Litke said. “Hopefully, it gets better. We’ll still go through the process, but if for some reason they don’t get better, we’re shutting them down right before Christmas.”
The last restaurant the health department shut down before a holiday has yet to recover, Litke added.
“Because, obviously, when the sign goes up saying ‘health department says don’t eat here,’ that carries a lot of weight for quite awhile,” he said. “So, the goal is never to hit that point because we don’t want to crush someone.”
The board voted unanimously to send the warning letter.
Hunan by the Falls front manager and Co-Owner Aileen Chin told the Geauga Maple Leaf they have been working to fix the violations.
“We take it very seriously,” she said. “We’ve been hiring professionals to clean and then have been educating all our employees to follow the guidelines.”
The health inspector can return at any time and will see the issues have been corrected, she added, noting the kitchen manager has been working with the cooks to improve operations.
“We are working 110% on correcting the situation,” she said, adding the restaurant has already improved a lot prior to the meeting with the health department.
“They still wanted more, which we understand after the meeting,” she said. “I agree. Food businesses are very cautious. (It’s) very important because everything is consumed into our stomach.”
The restaurant is 35 years old and items sometimes get misplaced in the process of updating it, she said.
Hunan by the Falls received awards from Cleveland Magazine in 2018 and 2025 after being voted the best Chinese restaurant on the east side of the Cleveland area, and was awarded a Silver Spoon award from Cleveland Magazine in 2020 after being nominated as one of the audience’s top restaurants.
