Chicken & Rice Guys say they will begin re-opening tomorrow

The Chicken & Rice Guys say Boston public-health inspections of their facilities have shown no E. coli and that their Medford restaurant will re-open tomorrow.

The Downtown Crossing store could re-open tomorrow as well, after an ISD inspection in the morning; in fact, ISD Commissioner William Christopher vows to buy the first meal at 11 a.m., assuming the inspection goes OK.

The chain's outlets - which also include restaurants on Lincoln Street downtown, Harvard Avenue in Allston and several food trucks - have been closed since April 11, when customers started coming down with E. coli infections.

The chain reports:

Since last Tuesday, testing of CNR’s employees, our food, and our facilities have all shown no traces of E. coli. As such, the Boston Public Health Commission has given us the “all clear” to resume operations pending re-inspection Saturday. We couldn’t be more proud of our amazing team, who received nothing but compliments for their professionalism, cooperation, and honesty from the BPHC during this difficult time.

CNR adds:

In the last 5 years, as the community has witnessed, we have experienced incredible growth. We did it with a great product, great service, and an amazing team. But, we can and will do better, especially in the realm of food safety. Our team spent the last 10 days attending safety meetings and candidly discussing what we do well as a company and what we need to further tighten up our food safety procedures. To further ensure the safety of the community, we have hired an external food safety consultant with over forty years of experience as an extra layer on top of our already experienced and professional operations team, properly disposed every ounce of prepared food in each location, professionally cleaned all locations, and have implemented even more rigorous safety policies and training. We have also created an external auditing process where independent safety experts will regularly conduct surprise inspections of all CNR locations above and beyond those required by the BPHC.