The world through food handlers eyes…
Food Hygiene
A Restaurant complaint can help you enjoy yourself
Feb 8th
I can’t imagine many people would sit down at a restaurant and ‘forgive and forget’ when it comes to discovering some old food on their ‘clean’ fork.
This old food was left there in the first place by a previous customer. Perhaps the food in the restaurant isn’t that tasty or good enough, so that they didn’t feel the urge to eat all their meal, or maybe they just weren’t that hungry that day. Either way, it was kindly left there by the restaurant dishwasher, if the fork even made it through. Perhaps it slipped through the net? This bit of old food on the fork is starting to tell quite an amazing story.
How to pick a restaurant abroad
Jan 21st
A menu that has been poorly translated is always amusing. Sometimes it can be an automatic phrase that sounds strange and has been translated by someone with a weak grasp of English armed only with a dictionary. The menu in only English, not in the language of the country, means it is a menu targeted at tourists and is a money-making trap.
Eating food abroad is a way of learning about a new culture and expanding your palate and overall experience. Enjoying the food with an afternoon beer comes highly recommended.
Don’t let the language barrier affect you too much when in a restaurant, you can always point or gesture at something on a menu if you need too.
Catch money from food hygiene online
Jan 15th
If you see a sign in a fast food restaurant that says: ‘No notes larger than £10 will be accepted’ you have to ask yourself why. What is the reason? One man might point at the sign and comment, ‘Trust me, if I had a note larger than ten pounds I would not be eating here’.
As a business, for less than £30 it is not worth thinking about the consequences of inaction or heavy penalties or risking exposing a business to action by Environmental Health officers.
Some luxuries can be enjoyed in hostile places
Jan 4th
Cooking a beef burger whilst being under fire is hardly ideal conditions for food preparation, but this is the type of basic training Royal Navy chefs undergo if they are to cook food on board a ship. This training means they are fully prepared to cook food in large quantities even in the most extreme conditions.
Whilst under fire, is dinner really what the soldiers should be thinking about? Perhaps they should first deal with the threat, then focus on what to have to eat a little later.
Prove it! The public know all about where they eat
Dec 23rd
Let’s set the context with a quick story from a well-known hotel. Basil Fawlty (played by John Cleese) thinks that a very difficult customer in his hotel, an outboard motor salesman, is an inspector, and having desperately failed to impress him, attempts to bribe him. When he realises he is not an inspector at all, and just as the real inspectors walk in, he delivers a custard pie to his face and pours a jug of milk into his briefcase.
Not what you would call a brilliant start to a health inspection. 
Trash-talking can savage profits
Dec 17th
Stories about a long hair found in a tin of soup, a live insect found in a salad, the Kentucky Fried mouse etc, are commonplace. Some stories are true or based on fact whereas others are gossip or rumours, but these stories can be extremely damaging to the reputation of the company involved and can cost them vast sums of money. A bad experience with food is usually enough for most people to vow never to buy that food or return to a certain food establishment ever
again.
The Kentucky Fried mouse example given is a story where a woman bites a chicken leg, and it turns out to be a mouse. Or a rat. It’s an urban myth. These stories always happen to someone else, so no one has ever actually met any of these people, only met someone who has.
Other stories are true. More >
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Giada De Laurentiis
Gordon Ramsay
Jamie Oliver
Careers in Food
BBC Recipes
Eat Well
Food Hygiene Certificate
Scores on the doors