Bug counters to infest kitchens
Mick Hume: Notebook
What do you look for in a restaurant to celebrate the new year? Good food, wine and atmosphere? No, the authorities are sure that what diners really want to know is how many bacteria are in the kitchen, and how much saturated fat is on the menu. Yummy.
The Times reported this week that the Food Standards Agency is to give every restaurant a cleanliness rating, with orders to post their “scores on the doors”. Eateries will then be graded on the “nutritional value” of their food.
Perhaps we should also be told whether they kill vermin humanely, what their policy is on workplace bullying by chefs, and the immigration status of their washers-up.
Anybody would think we were in the middle of a food poisoning epidemic. In fact, Britain’s eateries are not only better but also cleaner and more inspected than ever before, and have mostly stopped putting strychnine or lead in food, like their Victorian forebears did.
It may make the grease police and droppings inspectors of the FSA choke on their low-fat diet, but most of us do not eat out in search of hygiene or “nutritional values”. If we did, we would never eat burgers or foie gras. If we wanted to dine in a clinical environment, we could eat straight from the fridge wearing latex gloves.
Even in these “transparent” times there are some things better done behind closed doors. As Fergus Henderson, chef at the immaculate St John restaurant in Smithfield, says “a scoring system on the doors suggests there is something tainted about eating out”, and risks bringing “magic” restaurants down to earth by “showing their dirty laundry on the door when it’s not dirty”.
It turns out that half of Britain’s remaining cases of food poisoning are not in restaurants at all, but in hospitals, schools and care homes where the food is often unsavoury in every sense. If the authorities want something for their prodnoses and peckstaffs to do, they might start by putting their own kitchens in order.
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