Clams with special sauce are one of the specialties at Vina Vietnamese restaurant in West Vancouver.

Something else they specialize in is cleanliness. Of the thousands of restaurants in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, they have among the best inspection records.

"People like to have a clean restaurant and we do our best to keep it as clean as we can," said manager John Hui.

CTV News reviewed thousands of inspection records at Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal Health from the past three years.

In those three years, Hui had no critical health violations -- the kinds of violations that officials worry could make a customer sick -- and just three other violations.

That's rare among restaurants in the industry. The provincial health records show that some 77 per cent of restaurants in the Fraser Health region -- and some 94 per cent of restaurants in the Vancouver Coastal Health region -- were handed at least one critical violation in the past three years.

The most common critical violations were leaving food out that should be refrigerated, failure to wash surfaces, and not providing hand washing stations to employees.

Another restaurant that stands out is Ken's Chinese Restaurant on Kingsway in Vancouver. In three years of inspections, not a single critical violation.

Kudos also to a Subway restaurant in Mission. It gets top marks for the Fraser Health region, with no critical violations in nine inspections in the past three years.

It's something the manager, Dal Nagra, takes personally.

"I've had food poisoning personally in a restaurant in Burnaby," he said. "You're up all night, vomiting nonstop. It's an experience you wouldn't want anyone else to go through."

He credits the training his staff get.

"It makes us realize the standards that we are keeping and trying to achieve, they are working," said Nagra.

Another winner was the Burger King on King George Highway in the Newton part of Surrey. After eight inspections in the past three years, they came away with no critical violations.

"Thank you very much for the recognition. We really appreciate it," said spokesman Cameron Loopstra in an e-mail.

Burger King was also the fast food restaurant with the fewest critical violations in the past three years.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward and Mi-Jung Lee