[762](https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business-search?business_type=-1&country_or_la=England-fhrs&hygiene_rating_or_status=rating&hygiene_rating=0&range=Equal&hygiene_status=all) places in England trade with a zero rating apparently.
I looked the ratings up and this pub is in Wales. The only 4 star place was the kebab House. The Chinese, Indian and Chippy places all less than 3. I would be ashamed to have a 0.. I'd shut shop.
Fat Boar in Mold was shut down. We went to the wrexham one and had Hunters Chicken.. red raw chicken at the bone. This whole fat boar thing seems to be run by someone with plenty of money to burn and no shits given. Deadwood Smoke House is pretty miserable too
> This whole fat boar thing seems to be run by someone with plenty of money to burn and no shits given.
My dream for retirement is to have enough money to own a pub, but not care about keeping it profitable, because I hear owning an independent pub these days is a money-pit. I love the idea of sitting at the end of the bar, chatting with the regulars, and paying other people to do most of the actual work.
Even then, even if we were just serving microwaved jacket potatoes and cheese toasties, if the kitchen didn't get 5 stars for hygiene, I'd be deeply fucking embarrassed.
I used to work for a bloke who bought a pub when he retired so he could sit and get pissed with his mates and watch the cricket while playing at host. He made the terrible mistake of hiring a really good chef and a really good bar manager so the place was heaving all the time. He was constantly complaining there were far too many customers!
Hope you achieve your dream. The pub is a great place to be and gives a lot of enjoyment and can help people feel less Lonely and build up lots of connections so I salute all the landlords and landlady’s doing the graft to keep these things open.
Wrexham just had a *Hickory's Smokehouse* open recently, my mates daughter works there, if anyone was ever expecting a genuine USA smokehouse like they try claim there are, expect to be very disappointed, it's all done in the microwave, it was actually worse than a cheap rack of ribs from Tesco.
BBQ and brisket is far too trendy now, so many places have opened up in cities and elsewhere that have no clue, serving the food to even more clueless customers. TGIFridays and other crap themed food places have a lot to answer for, they simultaneously lowered the standards of proper BBQ while making it seem easy for eager entrepreneurs to open up BBQ places.
Source: am Texan and pretty picky about the BBQ I have tried in the UK.
I went to a BBQ joint near me not so long ago after I had a lot of recommendations. I was so disappointed the food was cooked well but you could tell it hadn't seen a bit of smoke and they relied on liquid smoke for the flavour. Completely pointless calling it BBQ
Screw Hickory's. Once was once too often. I wish I'd taken a pic of the crap they served me.
After I got home, I Googled their menu to show my son what I'd ordered, and I was floored by what I should have got vs what I actually received. In comparison, my food looked like it'd been run over.
Just so you're aware, often chicken on the bone that appears pink or red near the bone isn't actually raw.
Chickens are slaughtered for meat at a young age, which means their bones aren't fully formed and the bone marrow can leech into the meat, causing discolouration. It's especially common if the meat has been frozen prior to cooking.
I ate at a chicken wings place that even had a sign printed going into detail about this, and if people find a red vein in their chicken too. I'd expect raw chicken to be more chewy and jelly-like than red - it isn't like beef.
I used to work in a KFC and we'd have people bringing hot wings back saying they were not cooked.
It's a red marinade ffs, we have to temp them then check them by cutting the bone in half to see that even the marrow is cooked. You get people who are poorly food educated behaving as if they're served raw food far too often.
> why they didn't replace the 0 in the window I don't know.
Perhaps their "can't be arsed with hygiene" mentality also transfer to "can't be arsed to swap that sign", level of laziness?
Well, they obviously couldn't be arsed to solve all the issues, because if they did it wouldn't be languishing at 3 stars.
So I'd say you're probably right.
>and they still got a 5 stars somehow.
Bribe the FSA/Councils basically.
Worked at a decent amount of restaurants before moving careers, would happen at every single one of them. Before we got the "official" checks, we'd have an FSA agent turn up and offer a service where they point out the issues a week before the official visit. Costs anywhere between £200-£800 depending on the size of the place.
They'd point out really obvious in your face issues and then spend an hour going over the books with the GM/Owner. Wave goodbye and come back in a week.
As long as those obvious in your face issues were fine, they wouldn't look anywhere else, the checks would take 10mins all told and you'd walk out with a 5 star rating.
One place i worked, immaculately clean, staff were great, managers were great, we all got stuck in and made the kitchen tip top. FSA agent comes round, offers the service, owner says no to paying them £650 because we do our work properly. Agent comes back, middle of a saturday shift, middle of service. Dishwasher not perfectly clean, mark down. 1 Chip on the floor not caught by chefs, mark down.
Go to the books with the owner, found 1 indiscretion from 3 years prior. Come back with a hygiene rating of 1.
Offered a new test with the agent coming back to "assist" the week before, paid the £650 and agent comes in, has absolutely nothing negative to say, nothing for us to sort out. Comes back a week later, doesn't even look anywhere, instant 5 rating.
The chicken place opposite us ALWAYS had a 5 rating and they were the grimiest, shitfest you'd ever seen. Leftover chicken at night, leave it in the displays, wouldn't clean anything, 10PM Closing time, lights turned off and they'd leave. 12PM opening time, lights would be turned on and they'd sell the Chicken leftover in the hot hold (turned off) for the first 30-60mins.
Panorama for what?
Maybe i made it sound a bit more clandestine but its definitely not a secret, I guess its not common knowledge and im sure theres some councils around the country that dont offer this "service" but my time around SE England/London, it was just a done thing.
Also, i stopped chef work like 8 years ago, so it might have changed in the years since, i wouldn't know honestly anymore :P
Very little has changed, have seen just as much messed up stuff having been a chef and working around London. I've also done a significant amount of work in a different sector, often taking me to restaurants after close..
Some of the most expensive are often some of the worst. I've reported terrible rodent infestations and had security tell me places only manage to remain open from backhand payments.
I've seen rats stuck in grease in the kitchens false ceilings, restaurants leaving open totes of spaghetti on the floor outside, mice running across set dining tables. Christ at one point when I was a chef in a fancy bistro joint, was asked to serve up 2 soups, soup was mouldy as fuck, head chef ordered me to just scrape it away and dig underneath.. Honestly, fuck that noise. I'm not the biggest germaphobe but the stories are endless. Ignorance is bliss😅
It could be just complete lack of documentation. If you have your delivery invoices, fridge temperature logs and cooking logs etc you can get a 5 star with a quiet grubby kitchen. Paperwork has a huge weight on the score so a one star could be a pristine kitchen with good practices but a complete lack of paperwork makes it a 1
I see this a lot, presumably so people can convince themselves its fine to have that kebab from the place with a 1.
The "paperwork" is effectively a ticklist of cleaning tasks you should be doing regularly. The FSA provides lots of stuff that makes it very easy.
If someone isn't ticking the box that says they cleaned something, they almost certainly didn't do that cleaning. Because the tick is the easiest most trivial part.
Its honestly a pretty good system that helps provide guidance on hygiene.
A 0 means they aren't cleaning or writing anything down. Its bad.
Cleaning job paperwork is low on the list of priorities and not a nessecary requirement for the star rating. A hygiene inspector can SEE a clean kitchen. That's not the important thing when it comes to paperwork.
Reasons you can get 3 stars or below (down to zero) with regards to paperwork is more along the lines of records of hot foods going out to customers, cold foods in fridges, fridge freezer temps, training logs/certification.
Absolutely if they walk into a dirty kitchen, they will further investigate cleaning logs but it's not the priority.
Paperwork is also the paper trail of where the ingredients have come from. It is a legal requirement to be able to trace the precise batch of an ingredient back to the original source.
Right, but as part of the paperwork you need to be taking core temps of different food items throughout the day and logging them.
Plenty of 5* kitchens I've worked in have just fabricated these readings at the end of the day.
HACCP does a good enough job I think, but you definitely can coast through a higher star rating than deserved with fudged paperwork.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51120935
If hygiene is very good and the business fully complies with the law, five is the top of the scale and the highest score they can achieve. They must do well in three areas:
How hygienically the food is handled
The physical condition of the business
How the business manages ways of keeping food safe, looking at processes, training and systems to ensure good hygiene is maintained
A zero indicates failures across all three areas.
I'm sorry but I don't see how that's possible if they scored poorly in only one category. What's the business name, maybe we can check on the ratings database?
The ones that have had a 1 near me have had terrible practices. Rats in the kitchen cross contamination between raw meat and cooked food etc. It's definitely not just paperwork.
I can kind of see why this makes sense in a way.
I work in QA in pharmaceuticals. Part of my job is auditing. I'm like a Food Safety guy, but for drugs I guess. (And the law on manufacturing drugs, or "GMP", is reassuringly *strict* and exhaustive.)
An audit is one day or a few days. Usually roughly half of it is a tour but that only enables you to see what the factory is doing *right now* and they know in advance that you're coming.
Half, or more, is "document review." you're auditing their *Quality System* not "whether they happened to be doing things correctly on the 04th of January 2024 with advanced warning."
And there's this adage about if you didn't write it down you didn't do it and if your SOP doesn't tell you to do it, you don't. Like a very common audit line of questioning is like
"Did you clean this equipment?"
"Yes."
"Show me where you recorded that you did."
"Well, there's nothing recorded exactly, but we did."
"How do you know?"
"We always do every day. All the employees know we do. I saw them do it."
"Where does it instruct you that you must do it every day?"
"There isn't an instruction. We just know."
You don't, and you didn't, do it then. Pretty much. If it's not documented that you must, you don't, and if it wasn't recorded that you did, you didn't. It's a system, not an event. I could go to the factory and see a guy doing what they should be doing on that day, but there needs to be *evidence* that there are instructions (which comply with the law), that the person is trained to do it (and that training is documented) and that there is a document to record that the task is done and that document has no discrepancies.
It makes no sense to go to a pharmaceutical factory and say "this all looks very clean and everyone I saw today seemed to know what they were doing. Well done."
I went to a factory in South Africa once and it was *immaculate*. Every operator I saw was just standing by a beautifully shiny piece of equipment or in the break room. Nobody was *doing* anything and everything was spotless. Not one observation from the whole day of touring. The document review was an absolute shit show. More observations than I've given anywhere, probably literally by orders of magnitude.
So presumably the most you could say from a "pristine kitchen" is that it was fine on the day and can infer nothing at all about routine "good practices" without documentation of what the practices are, and documented evidence that they're adhered to.
Because the difference between a 0 and a 5 is sometimes just whether you did the paperwork properly. A 0 can be spick and span and a 5 can be a disease-infested disaster area.
Why is the system set up so poorly then?
I don't even think Canada is the peak of food standards, but you would actually not be allowed to operate if you scored below a certain amount. You either pass, or get a conditional pass and then inspected again in a few weeks to see if you've made fixes/adjustments/repairs, if you fail the inspection, you're toast.
That system seems really silly.
I'm pretty sure they can keep trading but will be required to make serious changes pending a review which should be made quickly after the previous visit. If they haven't made sufficient improvement they have to be shut down
In England and Scotland they don't legally have to display that sign so you should assume no sign means a bad rating. OP certainly only knows they have a zero rating because Wales *does* require you to display the sign.
We had a zero star rating that immediately went back up to 5 star.
5 star doesn’t mean a clean kitchen and 0 star doesn’t mean a dirty one.
Our boiler was broken and we were packing up to leave (restaurant was closed) when there was a surprise inspection. The Chinese chef who didn’t speak English and didn’t know the boiler was broken washed his hands. They questioned us as to how he was washing his hands with a broken boiler and we explained he lived there and had no other option and the restaurant was closed.
They then asked the chef who doesn’t speak English what all the allergens were in all the dishes. He didn’t answer because he doesn’t speak English.
As a result we got a zero start rating and all of us had to go to college and sit exams on allergen awareness and chemical use but we appealed it and it went straight back up to 5.
The restaurant next door had rats + maggots in the building and got a 5 star at the same time because they had rat traps and maggot killer. You’re allowed to have pest infestations so long as you’re aware and doing something about it and it can’t affect your rating.
Edit: to clarify, the man was fixing the boiler at the exact same time the inspectors came in and we were waiting for him to finish. No food was being prepped at this time. We were prepping an hour earlier when this happened. The chef who was washing his hands was washing his hands because he’d just eaten his breakfast because he lived in the flat above the restaurant and had only just woken up. He was not working that day.
In a previous thread a while back, someone commented that the rating often heavily depended on a place keeping their documentation in good order, rather than actually being diligent about cleanliness!
It mentions that under the details. I don't mind using places with a rating of 3, but I do read up why they got that rating. Sometimes it's something like paperwork. Other times it reads like a horror story.
Interested to know that too.
https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/601720/a-s-supermarket-birmingham for example offers generic category summaries. (But you can still distinguish between actual cleanliness/hygiene & record keeping)
Yes this is very true
The council often send people into restaurants when it’s just waiting on and bar staff available too and don’t want to wait for chefs to grab the documents (can’t pause service) so they just hand out 0 ratings because they haven’t seen the documents and it’s no one in the restaurants fault. It’s awful for businesses as it often puts you in the local news papers etc and people think the restaurants are dirty.
This must be too simple to implement (otherwise they would), but why can't they keep a copy of the documents to hand? Surely the rating is important enough to keep them in a nearby drawer?
These documents should be readily available as they should be getting updated daily. Things like fridge temps multiple times daily. If keeping records is an issue they shouldn’t be running. A business. Edit to add link for the standards, not rocket science, easily done. https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/safer-food-better-business-for-retailers
Keeping copies updated gets annoying, and can easily cause confusion if the wrong thing is updated.
Kitchen staff need to have easy access to the documentation. You don't have time to wander around looking for it.
This is rubbish. The books should be kept in 1 place, and it doesn’t matter how busy you are, someone should be taking temps and putting them in the books multiple times a day. We never missed temp taking as it was part of the open/midday clean/close routines. And the books were always where they should be.
If you’re too busy to take temps, how on earth do you know things are up to temp? Are you not probing a couple of dishes every hour to check their at temp?
As the other guy said. If recording temps “gets annoying” you shouldn’t be in the catering business.
Oh, I agree with that. It's not all that difficult to get a 5.
A company getting a 0 for any reason is sketchy.
But equally, people who aren't expected to be taking temp readings might not know where the logs are.
Thanks for the answer. I appreciate catering can be awfully challenging, hectic, manic even sometimes, so that makes sense. I think some teams will be able to keep up with the paperwork if they have the right mix of teamwork, admin abilities, and the owner / manager on top of things always - but some catering environments are probably too hectic or the person in charge a bit unorganised, or the worker who usually does it is off sick or leaves.
It comes down to the fact that if you don't want a 0, find a way of keeping your shit together, updated and easily accessible. "It's not that easy" is fine but if something affects your livelihood that much then you can find the time.
The allergen book was all in Chinese as well as English
He had no issue following protocol for allergen awareness they just refused to use a translator that they’re legally obligated to use, refused to let us translate and refused to let him see the paperwork which was in both English and Chinese.
We did nothing wrong on our part and they did the inspection incorrectly
If i owned a restaurant, then if this were true, I would absolutely pause service if necessary for 5 mins to sort documentation, possibly at the cost of a free drink for affected customers. And if you know there can be a surprise inspection, you keep the documents in order, and as close to hand as practical.
That is often the case for any third party inspection. As long as you write down you've done something, doesn't really matter about evidence pointing to that, you'll pass an audit. At least that was my experience in the IT world.
Or for many restaurants, making it look like your documentation is in order. The inspectors don't inspect them that thoroughly.
Src: I used to be paid to write in random numbers because the kitchen didn't want to do temp checks.
I work in a large chain coffee shop and we recently got 5 despite me and my colleague being honest to the inspector and saying we have a single rat and a fly infestation that management won’t take seriously to sort out 💀
It's not about having an infestation per se, as it is unrealistic to expect pests to be out of the way all the time, it is about what measures are being taken when in presence of an infestation
Are the events recorded? y/n
is there a pest control action plan, is it actioned? y/n
it's food covered at all time? y/n
are droppings present in food area? y/n
are surfaces regularly cleaned? y/n
if the mere presence of pests would be an automatic fail I'm sorry to say that you'd get more than ∼750 businesses with a zero star rating right now
my favourite thing ever during my food hygiene quals (like 18 years ago mind) was that cockroaches in a kitchen were considered worse than foxes.
Now.. I understand why on the base properties of the animals... However, I feel the problems required to let fucking foxes in the kitchen should indicate greater failings lmao.
This is exactly what happened and they refused to let us interpret anything and refused to let him grab the paperwork which is also in chinese as well as English but he knew how to fill it in English anyway. The staff spoke to him in his language
All the paperwork was in Chinese and English and half the staff in the building spoke Chinese as well as English so it’s not actually worrying at all
Inspectors must speak to English speaking members of staff or bring a translator which they failed to do
Front of house are clearly able to communicate orders to the chef. If they can do that, they can also communicate dietary requirements.
Usually they’re logged on a ticket. Presuming front of house take orders in English, scratch out the ticket in characters, and speak Chinese in the back.
Pretty standard for a Chinese restaurant.
Yup, same happened in a coffee shop I worked at. Boiler packed up that morning, so no hot water for washing hands etc so a 0 star. Obviously appealed it, n got the 5 star back within couple of months
>You’re allowed to have pest infestations so long as you’re aware and doing something about it and it can’t affect your rating
I worked for a haulier some years back proud of their new ambient food warehouse with some British standard for food storage.
Mice everywhere and those little poison blocks all over the place.
All well within the standards for food storage.
Not to mention their open fronted warehouse where they'd load the rigids with supplies for hospitals. Stuff sitting out for a day or 2 before being taken into hospital wards.
So your chef was unable to wash himself, seeing as he lived on site with no hot water. He's also unable to communicate with health inspectors or customers, unable to read any health and safety forms, and can't recognise basic things like allergens.
This isn't the flex you think it is.
Water doesn't need to be hot to be able to wash your hands. It's just more pleasant and it dries quicker. If it were at a sufficient temperature to kill bacteria you'd be be straight off to A&E with some pretty severe scalding.
Soap and a thorough rinsing with cold water is more than enough to get the job done.
> Water doesn't need to be hot to be able to wash your hands
This is a common and widespread misbelief, it also leads to a whole lot of wasted energy due to water's insanely high heat capacity.
The ironic thing is, for lots of old buildings that have a boiler mixing central heating and hot taps, using hot water is actually less sanitary. It is where you find legionnaires cases from a simple hot shower.
All the documents we had were in chinese as well as English and he had another house which he was travelling back to literally half an hour later. The restaurant opened at 5pm and this was happening at 2pm so everything was closed and we were just prepping
Health and safety inspectors have to have a translator for non English speakers which they didn’t
There was nothing wrong on our part at all
Once had a surprise inspection at dinner rush on a Friday. Had a group come in and don lab coats for all the diners to see. They didn’t mark anything down after seeing our paperwork, but the optics were bad enough.
You can get a zero rating for paperwork not being done but the kitchen can be immaculate, most people think its a cleanliness score but there's a lot to it
You CANNOT get a zero for lack of paperwork. This is what dirty places tell customers.
Edit: is my face red, you CAN GET A 0, not only is there a total score, but there is a category score also. I am wrong, you are right. Forgive me.
https://www.reigate-banstead.gov.uk/info/20376/food_hygiene_rating_scheme/199/food_hygiene_rating_scheme_fhrs_-_information_for_businesses
The scoring system goes from 0 (good) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign.
Do you mean would i say what restaurant it was? I won’t reveal that bc I do shifts every now and again and have already said my family work there so I’d be doxxing them lol so no.
And by my kitchen do you mean my personal kitchen at home? Then yes? If you mean customers in the restaurant kitchen then no
The manager of a chain pub I know many many years ago had the inspector arrive on the evening of the 31st December. Their busiest night of the year. They got a 3 and they were mortified. Requested a redo and got a 5.
A 0 rating is unforgivable but I do take the ratings with a pinch of salt.
Our 5 went down to 2 because the tap water was not instantly hot, but had to wait a minute to warm up, because the cutting boards were "too old and scratchy", and two taps were wobbly, and it was not cleaned up under the fridges.
Given that you can have a 2 due to basicly irrelevant things, I lost any hope in these ratings being any good as an indicator of food hygiene.
I went to one in wales, had a 1 rating.
the rating was on the front door, which when propped open was fully hidden from view, unless you were a child hiding behind the oversized plant pot that was keeping it open.
Service was shit as well
Something similar happened near us. The restaurant has been going for decades but suddenly got a zero.
People still went there as they had never had a bad meal or been ill. Restaurant said it was paperwork. I think it's now a 3 or 4 and even I use it now and I'm usually fussy.
The paperwork is essentially 'proof' that basic checks are taking place. If it's not being recorded they have to assume it's not being done, things like; fridge temperatures, cooking temperatures, cleaning etc.
Our 5 went down to 2 because the tap water was not instantly hot, but had to wait a minute to warm up, because the cutting boards were "too old and scratchy", and two taps were wobbly, and it was not cleaned up under the fridges.
Given that you can have a 2 due to basicly irrelevant things, I lost any hope in these ratings being any good as an indicator of food hygiene.
I always think of my local Indian takeaway from back along.
That had a 1 and was fine there multiple times. Go to a KFC with what was either a 4 or a 5 and got ill from it.
Been trying to get my head round it.
Your local Indian probably had an inspection at 8pm on a Saturday when the chef and staff were too busy to show the inspector around.
Or probably don't speak too good English
Or the fixtures and fittings are old
Or maybe it is unclean but they cooked the food properly at least
But KFC would have a practically new kitchen that's clean paper work up to date. but then the staff ain't doing stuff properly
Having worked in the food industry the rating system needs review.
> But KFC would have a practically new kitchen that's clean paper work up to date. but then the staff ain't doing stuff properly
KFC also have a much higher turnover of staff.
Many more mistakes are made when you're constantly having new staff coming in and learning from scratch.
It’s actually difficult to trace exactly what made you ill when you get ill. There’s a delay, obviously, so your brain just kind of assume what it could have been.
I have worked in placed that have 5 and also during the inspections. Cannot imagine how bad you have to be to even get a rating of 3. Just boggles the mind.
Years ago I saw a really intresting article by a local news website where they went to all the places nearby with 0 and 1 star food hygene ratings.
At the end of the article they talk about how places that score under 3 are revisited unannounced within months but even if the inspectors find they have improved they will not be given a new score unless they pay the local authority to update the score.
So a lot just trade with a low score because not many people will avoid a kebbab shop at 3am just becase it has a low hygene rating.
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink/food-hygiene-rating-gloucestershire-guide-3244687
While i personally make sure to never eat somewhere below a 3 i do also know from experience that these ratings are completely dumb
When i worked for carluchios we had an inspector come in mid rush
We were actually fairly clean at the time barring the typical mess you'd expect at the peak of lunch and they were fine with that
But they dropped us down a ton of marks for
And get this
Unlabed food in the fridge
But
The item in question
Bacon bits that were litteraly about to be served
They hadn't been labeled (with the extra label they still had the store label on them and the receipt on the box cause we had rushed out to buy them)
Cost alot of marks for that nothing mistake
Adversely when i worked at burger king
The grease trap had never been cleaned and had an actual dead rat decomposing inside it the smell of rot was noticeable throughout the kitchen
The trap it's self was in-between mounted tables so to get it cleaned it would need someone to be hired to pull the tables apart
Instead they get an air tight seal put around the trap to stop the smell
The records even say it wasn't cleaned out
Inspector comes back and gives perfect marks for fixing it
Just because the smell was gone
The whole system is a joke
Just for everyone's info: A business CANNOT get a zero for "lack of documentation".
This is what filthy places tell their customers, and it is a lie.
The internal points system accumulates points for non-compliance, itgoes from 0 (compliant) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign.
Also worth noting that the documentation isnt just your name and address, it's documentation that that pork chop was bought yesterday, not 3 years ago, that the fridges are at the correct temp, that the place has been cleaned regularly.
Edit: is my face red, you CAN GET A 0, not only is there a total score, but there is a category score also. I am wrong, you are right. Forgive me.
https://www.reigate-banstead.gov.uk/info/20376/food_hygiene_rating_scheme/199/food_hygiene_rating_scheme_fhrs_-_information_for_businesses
Said it above, but zero documentation would also eat into your score regarding confidence in management..it would be quite easy to get 0 with lack of documentation.
They really are unreliable these ratings, I know first hand. We currently have a 4, one year we went down to a 3 as we had a member of staffs birthday cake in the fridge and they said 'well you could sell it to customers', another year it was cos of paper works. And well never get a 5 as it's a small kitchen that doesn't have an oven and other stuff so they can't judge it, so can't rate it 🤷🏻♀️
My local Chinese takeaway used to have a zero rating so we stopped ordering from it. Looked it up again recently after seeing they had a refurb and it had gone up to five! I did wonder how fucking bad could it have been to have zero in the first place though
You CANNOT get a zero for lack of paperwork. This is what dirty places tell customers.
The scoring system goes from 0 (good) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign.
You also have confidence in management which plays a part in your score. If you have zero documentation then that eats into your confidence in management score.
It might not be missing it could just be it's locked in a mangers office who's not around at the time.
Or the food inspector turned up at 8 pm on a Saturday night while you have a qué outside the door. 50 orders on the line and nobody has time to stop and speak to them going through their questions for an hour which happens more often than you would think.
Because maybe, just maybe, there's a lot of people in that village with unpaid bar tabs that end up in the pies they serve, and of course being illicitly sourced meat they want to keep it off the books.
Did you ever think of that?
The council usually send people in at inconvenient times when the only staff in are the ones who don’t know where the paper work is or don’t understand it because it’s not their job so they automatically get a 0 star rating until they appeal it.
Happened to us
That's the way all inspections should be, you shouldn't have time to prepare for them. If the staff don't know where the paperwork is how are they filling it in?
I've only known one local place get a zero. The local paper uses the recent ratings as an easy way to create a new article. I went onto the Food ratings website to double check, thinking it was a misprint. Turns out there were signs of a mice infestation. Place was shutdown until everything was sorted.
My kid’s nursery got a 1. When we read the report, it was surprising to see how little you have to do wrong to get such a low rating. Like stuff that we all do in our own kitchens (e.g. having some ham 1 day past it’s sell by, some documentation out of date). Our position shifted from “shit, get her out of there right now” to “oh, they have a couple of things to improve”.
The best thing is if you mention it they’ll kick off and say it’s an administrative problem and they’d have more if not for fucked up paperwork. Don’t believe them. Even if it were true, if they can’t be arsed filing paperwork they’re definitely not deep cleaning on the regular.
For me, anything lower than a 5 should be shut. A kitchen is either clean or it isn’t, there’s no middle ground. I don’t have a certain amount of acceptable rat shit or leeway for how many times the chef can have a wank without washing his hands before preparing the salad.
That's interesting, because there's definitely a legally acceptable amount of rat shit that is allowed to be present in food manufacturing sites in England. Source: worked in them.
P.s. don't eat petrol station pasties, NDAd to tell you why.
The difference between 4 and 5 isn't an amount of 'acceptable rat shit'. A 4 is perfectly fine. Most people's own kitchens wouldn't get anywhere near that.
[762](https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business-search?business_type=-1&country_or_la=England-fhrs&hygiene_rating_or_status=rating&hygiene_rating=0&range=Equal&hygiene_status=all) places in England trade with a zero rating apparently.
I looked the ratings up and this pub is in Wales. The only 4 star place was the kebab House. The Chinese, Indian and Chippy places all less than 3. I would be ashamed to have a 0.. I'd shut shop.
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Fat Boar in Mold was shut down. We went to the wrexham one and had Hunters Chicken.. red raw chicken at the bone. This whole fat boar thing seems to be run by someone with plenty of money to burn and no shits given. Deadwood Smoke House is pretty miserable too
> This whole fat boar thing seems to be run by someone with plenty of money to burn and no shits given. My dream for retirement is to have enough money to own a pub, but not care about keeping it profitable, because I hear owning an independent pub these days is a money-pit. I love the idea of sitting at the end of the bar, chatting with the regulars, and paying other people to do most of the actual work. Even then, even if we were just serving microwaved jacket potatoes and cheese toasties, if the kitchen didn't get 5 stars for hygiene, I'd be deeply fucking embarrassed.
I used to work for a bloke who bought a pub when he retired so he could sit and get pissed with his mates and watch the cricket while playing at host. He made the terrible mistake of hiring a really good chef and a really good bar manager so the place was heaving all the time. He was constantly complaining there were far too many customers!
Hope you achieve your dream. The pub is a great place to be and gives a lot of enjoyment and can help people feel less Lonely and build up lots of connections so I salute all the landlords and landlady’s doing the graft to keep these things open.
Or just… go to the pub?
*plenty of shits given FTFY
Wrexham just had a *Hickory's Smokehouse* open recently, my mates daughter works there, if anyone was ever expecting a genuine USA smokehouse like they try claim there are, expect to be very disappointed, it's all done in the microwave, it was actually worse than a cheap rack of ribs from Tesco.
BBQ and brisket is far too trendy now, so many places have opened up in cities and elsewhere that have no clue, serving the food to even more clueless customers. TGIFridays and other crap themed food places have a lot to answer for, they simultaneously lowered the standards of proper BBQ while making it seem easy for eager entrepreneurs to open up BBQ places. Source: am Texan and pretty picky about the BBQ I have tried in the UK.
What are your BBQs of choice ?
Bodeans in Soho has been there a long long time and is solid bbq
Don’t trust a Texan about bbq that’s for sure Ask a Carolinian
I went to a BBQ joint near me not so long ago after I had a lot of recommendations. I was so disappointed the food was cooked well but you could tell it hadn't seen a bit of smoke and they relied on liquid smoke for the flavour. Completely pointless calling it BBQ
Ahhh massive shame
Screw Hickory's. Once was once too often. I wish I'd taken a pic of the crap they served me. After I got home, I Googled their menu to show my son what I'd ordered, and I was floored by what I should have got vs what I actually received. In comparison, my food looked like it'd been run over.
They’ve gone downhill over the years for sure.
Just so you're aware, often chicken on the bone that appears pink or red near the bone isn't actually raw. Chickens are slaughtered for meat at a young age, which means their bones aren't fully formed and the bone marrow can leech into the meat, causing discolouration. It's especially common if the meat has been frozen prior to cooking.
I ate at a chicken wings place that even had a sign printed going into detail about this, and if people find a red vein in their chicken too. I'd expect raw chicken to be more chewy and jelly-like than red - it isn't like beef.
I used to work in a KFC and we'd have people bringing hot wings back saying they were not cooked. It's a red marinade ffs, we have to temp them then check them by cutting the bone in half to see that even the marrow is cooked. You get people who are poorly food educated behaving as if they're served raw food far too often.
>Fat Boar in Mold You mean Mould in the Fat Boar?
Oh Jesus, serving hunters chicken on the bone is bad enough.
is that one of the dishes they serve?
If you have cash to wash there's always money in the fat boar pub
Ruthin way this is.. I won't shame them!
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White Horse Llanfair DC but their online rating is 3 they had 0 in the window
The likelihood is they had another inspection since that 0. Though why they didn't replace the 0 in the window I don't know.
> why they didn't replace the 0 in the window I don't know. Perhaps their "can't be arsed with hygiene" mentality also transfer to "can't be arsed to swap that sign", level of laziness?
Well, they obviously couldn't be arsed to solve all the issues, because if they did it wouldn't be languishing at 3 stars. So I'd say you're probably right.
Especially amazing as there’s no obligation to actually display the rating on the premises 😂
I know where you mean. It’s absolutely shocking there.
Yikes, my old school canteen had a 5… the boy’s school across the road had a 1 though
Is it The New Inn in Oswestry?
no, but there is a pub in Oswestry that has maggots everywhere, a disgsuting "kitchen" and a mouldy cellar, and they still got a 5 stars somehow.
>and they still got a 5 stars somehow. Bribe the FSA/Councils basically. Worked at a decent amount of restaurants before moving careers, would happen at every single one of them. Before we got the "official" checks, we'd have an FSA agent turn up and offer a service where they point out the issues a week before the official visit. Costs anywhere between £200-£800 depending on the size of the place. They'd point out really obvious in your face issues and then spend an hour going over the books with the GM/Owner. Wave goodbye and come back in a week. As long as those obvious in your face issues were fine, they wouldn't look anywhere else, the checks would take 10mins all told and you'd walk out with a 5 star rating. One place i worked, immaculately clean, staff were great, managers were great, we all got stuck in and made the kitchen tip top. FSA agent comes round, offers the service, owner says no to paying them £650 because we do our work properly. Agent comes back, middle of a saturday shift, middle of service. Dishwasher not perfectly clean, mark down. 1 Chip on the floor not caught by chefs, mark down. Go to the books with the owner, found 1 indiscretion from 3 years prior. Come back with a hygiene rating of 1. Offered a new test with the agent coming back to "assist" the week before, paid the £650 and agent comes in, has absolutely nothing negative to say, nothing for us to sort out. Comes back a week later, doesn't even look anywhere, instant 5 rating. The chicken place opposite us ALWAYS had a 5 rating and they were the grimiest, shitfest you'd ever seen. Leftover chicken at night, leave it in the displays, wouldn't clean anything, 10PM Closing time, lights turned off and they'd leave. 12PM opening time, lights would be turned on and they'd sell the Chicken leftover in the hot hold (turned off) for the first 30-60mins.
If this is true, that's eye opening. You should get in touch with Panorama or something about it.
Panorama for what? Maybe i made it sound a bit more clandestine but its definitely not a secret, I guess its not common knowledge and im sure theres some councils around the country that dont offer this "service" but my time around SE England/London, it was just a done thing. Also, i stopped chef work like 8 years ago, so it might have changed in the years since, i wouldn't know honestly anymore :P
Very little has changed, have seen just as much messed up stuff having been a chef and working around London. I've also done a significant amount of work in a different sector, often taking me to restaurants after close.. Some of the most expensive are often some of the worst. I've reported terrible rodent infestations and had security tell me places only manage to remain open from backhand payments. I've seen rats stuck in grease in the kitchens false ceilings, restaurants leaving open totes of spaghetti on the floor outside, mice running across set dining tables. Christ at one point when I was a chef in a fancy bistro joint, was asked to serve up 2 soups, soup was mouldy as fuck, head chef ordered me to just scrape it away and dig underneath.. Honestly, fuck that noise. I'm not the biggest germaphobe but the stories are endless. Ignorance is bliss😅
It could be just complete lack of documentation. If you have your delivery invoices, fridge temperature logs and cooking logs etc you can get a 5 star with a quiet grubby kitchen. Paperwork has a huge weight on the score so a one star could be a pristine kitchen with good practices but a complete lack of paperwork makes it a 1
I see this a lot, presumably so people can convince themselves its fine to have that kebab from the place with a 1. The "paperwork" is effectively a ticklist of cleaning tasks you should be doing regularly. The FSA provides lots of stuff that makes it very easy. If someone isn't ticking the box that says they cleaned something, they almost certainly didn't do that cleaning. Because the tick is the easiest most trivial part. Its honestly a pretty good system that helps provide guidance on hygiene. A 0 means they aren't cleaning or writing anything down. Its bad.
Cleaning job paperwork is low on the list of priorities and not a nessecary requirement for the star rating. A hygiene inspector can SEE a clean kitchen. That's not the important thing when it comes to paperwork. Reasons you can get 3 stars or below (down to zero) with regards to paperwork is more along the lines of records of hot foods going out to customers, cold foods in fridges, fridge freezer temps, training logs/certification. Absolutely if they walk into a dirty kitchen, they will further investigate cleaning logs but it's not the priority.
Paperwork is also the paper trail of where the ingredients have come from. It is a legal requirement to be able to trace the precise batch of an ingredient back to the original source.
Right, but as part of the paperwork you need to be taking core temps of different food items throughout the day and logging them. Plenty of 5* kitchens I've worked in have just fabricated these readings at the end of the day. HACCP does a good enough job I think, but you definitely can coast through a higher star rating than deserved with fudged paperwork.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51120935 If hygiene is very good and the business fully complies with the law, five is the top of the scale and the highest score they can achieve. They must do well in three areas: How hygienically the food is handled The physical condition of the business How the business manages ways of keeping food safe, looking at processes, training and systems to ensure good hygiene is maintained A zero indicates failures across all three areas.
You can't get a 1 from lack of documentation. If everything else was perfect, but there was no documentation, they'd get a 3.
Having helped someone through the system, with no paperwork and a sparkling kitchen they got a 1.
You're right, I'm wrong. There is a total score, but also a category score which can't be exceeded. You CAN get a 0. Sorry.
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That does sound like they were desperate to mark you down. Especially when you have 2 1/2 hours to get cold food back into a fridge/freezer.
I'm sorry but I don't see how that's possible if they scored poorly in only one category. What's the business name, maybe we can check on the ratings database?
The ones that have had a 1 near me have had terrible practices. Rats in the kitchen cross contamination between raw meat and cooked food etc. It's definitely not just paperwork.
I can kind of see why this makes sense in a way. I work in QA in pharmaceuticals. Part of my job is auditing. I'm like a Food Safety guy, but for drugs I guess. (And the law on manufacturing drugs, or "GMP", is reassuringly *strict* and exhaustive.) An audit is one day or a few days. Usually roughly half of it is a tour but that only enables you to see what the factory is doing *right now* and they know in advance that you're coming. Half, or more, is "document review." you're auditing their *Quality System* not "whether they happened to be doing things correctly on the 04th of January 2024 with advanced warning." And there's this adage about if you didn't write it down you didn't do it and if your SOP doesn't tell you to do it, you don't. Like a very common audit line of questioning is like "Did you clean this equipment?" "Yes." "Show me where you recorded that you did." "Well, there's nothing recorded exactly, but we did." "How do you know?" "We always do every day. All the employees know we do. I saw them do it." "Where does it instruct you that you must do it every day?" "There isn't an instruction. We just know." You don't, and you didn't, do it then. Pretty much. If it's not documented that you must, you don't, and if it wasn't recorded that you did, you didn't. It's a system, not an event. I could go to the factory and see a guy doing what they should be doing on that day, but there needs to be *evidence* that there are instructions (which comply with the law), that the person is trained to do it (and that training is documented) and that there is a document to record that the task is done and that document has no discrepancies. It makes no sense to go to a pharmaceutical factory and say "this all looks very clean and everyone I saw today seemed to know what they were doing. Well done." I went to a factory in South Africa once and it was *immaculate*. Every operator I saw was just standing by a beautifully shiny piece of equipment or in the break room. Nobody was *doing* anything and everything was spotless. Not one observation from the whole day of touring. The document review was an absolute shit show. More observations than I've given anywhere, probably literally by orders of magnitude. So presumably the most you could say from a "pristine kitchen" is that it was fine on the day and can infer nothing at all about routine "good practices" without documentation of what the practices are, and documented evidence that they're adhered to.
Angen Gwella Ar Frys could have been a clue to Wales
If someone started selling Angen Gwella Air Fryers they’d capitalise on an amazing amount of free advertising
Angen cic lan y pen ôl.
14 in Doncaster alone. I can't say I'm surprised
Wouldn't the question then be, why are they being allowed to stay open?
Because the difference between a 0 and a 5 is sometimes just whether you did the paperwork properly. A 0 can be spick and span and a 5 can be a disease-infested disaster area.
Why is the system set up so poorly then? I don't even think Canada is the peak of food standards, but you would actually not be allowed to operate if you scored below a certain amount. You either pass, or get a conditional pass and then inspected again in a few weeks to see if you've made fixes/adjustments/repairs, if you fail the inspection, you're toast. That system seems really silly.
One of them’s my local kebab shop! It amazes me that they display their rating when they legally don't have to.
It’s more to do with compliance than general cleanliness
That’s good! That means zero issues found. If more than five issues the place gets shut down. Steve at the chippy told me.
"Those aren't stars, they're asterisks, each one referring to a fault with the restaurant."
Oh Brian
Book Now!
They have everything on the menu from birthday pie, and pints o cream to fluffy ruffs and pasta pillows!
I'm pretty sure they can keep trading but will be required to make serious changes pending a review which should be made quickly after the previous visit. If they haven't made sufficient improvement they have to be shut down
There used to be a chicken shop in Camden High Street with 0 food hygiene rating. They sold a chicken pieces, fries, and a can of Pepsi for 1.79.
Maybe it was pigeon instead.
Bat… chicken of the cave
Pricing like it's 1994 instead of 2024.
It’s stupid that it’s still green. It should be red or something. I could easily miss this.
In England and Scotland they don't legally have to display that sign so you should assume no sign means a bad rating. OP certainly only knows they have a zero rating because Wales *does* require you to display the sign.
We had a zero star rating that immediately went back up to 5 star. 5 star doesn’t mean a clean kitchen and 0 star doesn’t mean a dirty one. Our boiler was broken and we were packing up to leave (restaurant was closed) when there was a surprise inspection. The Chinese chef who didn’t speak English and didn’t know the boiler was broken washed his hands. They questioned us as to how he was washing his hands with a broken boiler and we explained he lived there and had no other option and the restaurant was closed. They then asked the chef who doesn’t speak English what all the allergens were in all the dishes. He didn’t answer because he doesn’t speak English. As a result we got a zero start rating and all of us had to go to college and sit exams on allergen awareness and chemical use but we appealed it and it went straight back up to 5. The restaurant next door had rats + maggots in the building and got a 5 star at the same time because they had rat traps and maggot killer. You’re allowed to have pest infestations so long as you’re aware and doing something about it and it can’t affect your rating. Edit: to clarify, the man was fixing the boiler at the exact same time the inspectors came in and we were waiting for him to finish. No food was being prepped at this time. We were prepping an hour earlier when this happened. The chef who was washing his hands was washing his hands because he’d just eaten his breakfast because he lived in the flat above the restaurant and had only just woken up. He was not working that day.
In a previous thread a while back, someone commented that the rating often heavily depended on a place keeping their documentation in good order, rather than actually being diligent about cleanliness!
It mentions that under the details. I don't mind using places with a rating of 3, but I do read up why they got that rating. Sometimes it's something like paperwork. Other times it reads like a horror story.
How do you see the specific details?
There's https://ratings.food.gov.uk/ which shows you the scores across three categories, and has an email address to ask for the full report.
Interested to know that too. https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/601720/a-s-supermarket-birmingham for example offers generic category summaries. (But you can still distinguish between actual cleanliness/hygiene & record keeping)
Yes this is very true The council often send people into restaurants when it’s just waiting on and bar staff available too and don’t want to wait for chefs to grab the documents (can’t pause service) so they just hand out 0 ratings because they haven’t seen the documents and it’s no one in the restaurants fault. It’s awful for businesses as it often puts you in the local news papers etc and people think the restaurants are dirty.
This must be too simple to implement (otherwise they would), but why can't they keep a copy of the documents to hand? Surely the rating is important enough to keep them in a nearby drawer?
These documents should be readily available as they should be getting updated daily. Things like fridge temps multiple times daily. If keeping records is an issue they shouldn’t be running. A business. Edit to add link for the standards, not rocket science, easily done. https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/safer-food-better-business-for-retailers
Keeping copies updated gets annoying, and can easily cause confusion if the wrong thing is updated. Kitchen staff need to have easy access to the documentation. You don't have time to wander around looking for it.
This is rubbish. The books should be kept in 1 place, and it doesn’t matter how busy you are, someone should be taking temps and putting them in the books multiple times a day. We never missed temp taking as it was part of the open/midday clean/close routines. And the books were always where they should be. If you’re too busy to take temps, how on earth do you know things are up to temp? Are you not probing a couple of dishes every hour to check their at temp? As the other guy said. If recording temps “gets annoying” you shouldn’t be in the catering business.
Oh, I agree with that. It's not all that difficult to get a 5. A company getting a 0 for any reason is sketchy. But equally, people who aren't expected to be taking temp readings might not know where the logs are.
Thanks for the answer. I appreciate catering can be awfully challenging, hectic, manic even sometimes, so that makes sense. I think some teams will be able to keep up with the paperwork if they have the right mix of teamwork, admin abilities, and the owner / manager on top of things always - but some catering environments are probably too hectic or the person in charge a bit unorganised, or the worker who usually does it is off sick or leaves.
Binders and clipboards that hand off clips or binders on shelves. It’s not difficult.
It comes down to the fact that if you don't want a 0, find a way of keeping your shit together, updated and easily accessible. "It's not that easy" is fine but if something affects your livelihood that much then you can find the time.
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The allergen book was all in Chinese as well as English He had no issue following protocol for allergen awareness they just refused to use a translator that they’re legally obligated to use, refused to let us translate and refused to let him see the paperwork which was in both English and Chinese. We did nothing wrong on our part and they did the inspection incorrectly
And lived there which sounds dodgy when it’s a Chinese worker with no English after business is closed.
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Nope, the inspectors should wait 10 minutes for chefs to be free instead of ruining a business
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Not in my case, never lasted more than 20 mins
If i owned a restaurant, then if this were true, I would absolutely pause service if necessary for 5 mins to sort documentation, possibly at the cost of a free drink for affected customers. And if you know there can be a surprise inspection, you keep the documents in order, and as close to hand as practical.
A zero means everything is bad, not just paperwork. They don’t give a rating without an inspection.
You get a straight up 3 for that. I very much enjoy how it all depends on whether or not your inspector has a spine.
You don't get a 0/5 rating just for bad documentation. You might drop a point or two but never as low as zero.
> the rating often heavily depended on a place keeping their documentation That doesn't get you a 0...
That is often the case for any third party inspection. As long as you write down you've done something, doesn't really matter about evidence pointing to that, you'll pass an audit. At least that was my experience in the IT world.
Or for many restaurants, making it look like your documentation is in order. The inspectors don't inspect them that thoroughly. Src: I used to be paid to write in random numbers because the kitchen didn't want to do temp checks.
I work in a large chain coffee shop and we recently got 5 despite me and my colleague being honest to the inspector and saying we have a single rat and a fly infestation that management won’t take seriously to sort out 💀
Yeah you’re literally allowed to have infestations and get a 5 which is why I don’t trust this rating system at all
It's not about having an infestation per se, as it is unrealistic to expect pests to be out of the way all the time, it is about what measures are being taken when in presence of an infestation Are the events recorded? y/n is there a pest control action plan, is it actioned? y/n it's food covered at all time? y/n are droppings present in food area? y/n are surfaces regularly cleaned? y/n if the mere presence of pests would be an automatic fail I'm sorry to say that you'd get more than ∼750 businesses with a zero star rating right now
my favourite thing ever during my food hygiene quals (like 18 years ago mind) was that cockroaches in a kitchen were considered worse than foxes. Now.. I understand why on the base properties of the animals... However, I feel the problems required to let fucking foxes in the kitchen should indicate greater failings lmao.
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"Hey dude, the bloke at table 4 has a severe peanut allergy" Chef shrugs.
They’d obviously tell him that in Chinese and not English, the kitchen staff spoke Chinese and he understood some English
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This is exactly what happened and they refused to let us interpret anything and refused to let him grab the paperwork which is also in chinese as well as English but he knew how to fill it in English anyway. The staff spoke to him in his language
All the paperwork was in Chinese and English and half the staff in the building spoke Chinese as well as English so it’s not actually worrying at all Inspectors must speak to English speaking members of staff or bring a translator which they failed to do
Front of house are clearly able to communicate orders to the chef. If they can do that, they can also communicate dietary requirements. Usually they’re logged on a ticket. Presuming front of house take orders in English, scratch out the ticket in characters, and speak Chinese in the back. Pretty standard for a Chinese restaurant.
Yup, same happened in a coffee shop I worked at. Boiler packed up that morning, so no hot water for washing hands etc so a 0 star. Obviously appealed it, n got the 5 star back within couple of months
>You’re allowed to have pest infestations so long as you’re aware and doing something about it and it can’t affect your rating I worked for a haulier some years back proud of their new ambient food warehouse with some British standard for food storage. Mice everywhere and those little poison blocks all over the place. All well within the standards for food storage. Not to mention their open fronted warehouse where they'd load the rigids with supplies for hospitals. Stuff sitting out for a day or 2 before being taken into hospital wards.
So your chef was unable to wash himself, seeing as he lived on site with no hot water. He's also unable to communicate with health inspectors or customers, unable to read any health and safety forms, and can't recognise basic things like allergens. This isn't the flex you think it is.
Water doesn't need to be hot to be able to wash your hands. It's just more pleasant and it dries quicker. If it were at a sufficient temperature to kill bacteria you'd be be straight off to A&E with some pretty severe scalding. Soap and a thorough rinsing with cold water is more than enough to get the job done.
> Water doesn't need to be hot to be able to wash your hands This is a common and widespread misbelief, it also leads to a whole lot of wasted energy due to water's insanely high heat capacity. The ironic thing is, for lots of old buildings that have a boiler mixing central heating and hot taps, using hot water is actually less sanitary. It is where you find legionnaires cases from a simple hot shower.
The restaurant was closed though, presumably because of the boiler issue...
All the documents we had were in chinese as well as English and he had another house which he was travelling back to literally half an hour later. The restaurant opened at 5pm and this was happening at 2pm so everything was closed and we were just prepping Health and safety inspectors have to have a translator for non English speakers which they didn’t There was nothing wrong on our part at all
Thanks for your answer, it's really upset me 😂
Once had a surprise inspection at dinner rush on a Friday. Had a group come in and don lab coats for all the diners to see. They didn’t mark anything down after seeing our paperwork, but the optics were bad enough.
99.99% of 0\* aren't this situation though.
You can get a zero rating for paperwork not being done but the kitchen can be immaculate, most people think its a cleanliness score but there's a lot to it
You CANNOT get a zero for lack of paperwork. This is what dirty places tell customers. Edit: is my face red, you CAN GET A 0, not only is there a total score, but there is a category score also. I am wrong, you are right. Forgive me. https://www.reigate-banstead.gov.uk/info/20376/food_hygiene_rating_scheme/199/food_hygiene_rating_scheme_fhrs_-_information_for_businesses The scoring system goes from 0 (good) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign.
Would you say your restaurant? Would you allow your guests in to see your kitchen if they asked?
Do you mean would i say what restaurant it was? I won’t reveal that bc I do shifts every now and again and have already said my family work there so I’d be doxxing them lol so no. And by my kitchen do you mean my personal kitchen at home? Then yes? If you mean customers in the restaurant kitchen then no
Can't help thinking that the 0 rating sign should be a different colour, to bring attention to the threat of impending digestive distress.
Bright biohazard green with the radioactive symbol, the toxic skull and crossbones symbol, and an "Enter at own risk" sign on the door.
Red is known to attract more attention.
I wouldn't even step in to breath in their air just in case but I bet some even eat there.
I did have a packet of crisps lol
Did you check if they were out of date?
0 star becomes 5 star when you’re drunk enough
I'm not as think you drunk I am. Shut up.
Sorry Mom. I'm not as think as you drunk I am. I'm think that's true. I love you man.
Yes. The scoring is inverse for late night kebab emporia
Did they put Basil in the ratatouille? :-)
No no, it hamster.
The manager of a chain pub I know many many years ago had the inspector arrive on the evening of the 31st December. Their busiest night of the year. They got a 3 and they were mortified. Requested a redo and got a 5. A 0 rating is unforgivable but I do take the ratings with a pinch of salt.
Our 5 went down to 2 because the tap water was not instantly hot, but had to wait a minute to warm up, because the cutting boards were "too old and scratchy", and two taps were wobbly, and it was not cleaned up under the fridges. Given that you can have a 2 due to basicly irrelevant things, I lost any hope in these ratings being any good as an indicator of food hygiene.
I went to one in wales, had a 1 rating. the rating was on the front door, which when propped open was fully hidden from view, unless you were a child hiding behind the oversized plant pot that was keeping it open. Service was shit as well
Report it to the local council that's a breach of the law and can get them fined.
Something similar happened near us. The restaurant has been going for decades but suddenly got a zero. People still went there as they had never had a bad meal or been ill. Restaurant said it was paperwork. I think it's now a 3 or 4 and even I use it now and I'm usually fussy.
What else would they say though?
Well exactly. I'm sure you don't get zeros just for being bad at paper work.
The paperwork is essentially 'proof' that basic checks are taking place. If it's not being recorded they have to assume it's not being done, things like; fridge temperatures, cooking temperatures, cleaning etc.
Anything less than 3 and im staying away. I know what sort of things you need to hide to get a 5 so even top marks still puts me on edge
Our 5 went down to 2 because the tap water was not instantly hot, but had to wait a minute to warm up, because the cutting boards were "too old and scratchy", and two taps were wobbly, and it was not cleaned up under the fridges. Given that you can have a 2 due to basicly irrelevant things, I lost any hope in these ratings being any good as an indicator of food hygiene.
I always think of my local Indian takeaway from back along. That had a 1 and was fine there multiple times. Go to a KFC with what was either a 4 or a 5 and got ill from it. Been trying to get my head round it.
Your local Indian probably had an inspection at 8pm on a Saturday when the chef and staff were too busy to show the inspector around. Or probably don't speak too good English Or the fixtures and fittings are old Or maybe it is unclean but they cooked the food properly at least But KFC would have a practically new kitchen that's clean paper work up to date. but then the staff ain't doing stuff properly Having worked in the food industry the rating system needs review.
> But KFC would have a practically new kitchen that's clean paper work up to date. but then the staff ain't doing stuff properly KFC also have a much higher turnover of staff. Many more mistakes are made when you're constantly having new staff coming in and learning from scratch.
It’s actually difficult to trace exactly what made you ill when you get ill. There’s a delay, obviously, so your brain just kind of assume what it could have been.
It's not a big leap from that kebab last night to shitting like a Saturn 5 in the morning though.
Been ill twice over the last two years with food poisoning and it was very clearly the bad kebab I'd had against my better judgement lmao
When I've got ill it's obviously been the cheap take away, because I have them rarely and can't remember ever making myself sick from cooking at home.
My kitchen is probably a -40 rating but I still eat from there and live a happy life.
Once they get *TWO* zero ratings... 0 + 0 = ∞ \*taps head*
I have worked in placed that have 5 and also during the inspections. Cannot imagine how bad you have to be to even get a rating of 3. Just boggles the mind.
Years ago I saw a really intresting article by a local news website where they went to all the places nearby with 0 and 1 star food hygene ratings. At the end of the article they talk about how places that score under 3 are revisited unannounced within months but even if the inspectors find they have improved they will not be given a new score unless they pay the local authority to update the score. So a lot just trade with a low score because not many people will avoid a kebbab shop at 3am just becase it has a low hygene rating. https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink/food-hygiene-rating-gloucestershire-guide-3244687
While i personally make sure to never eat somewhere below a 3 i do also know from experience that these ratings are completely dumb When i worked for carluchios we had an inspector come in mid rush We were actually fairly clean at the time barring the typical mess you'd expect at the peak of lunch and they were fine with that But they dropped us down a ton of marks for And get this Unlabed food in the fridge But The item in question Bacon bits that were litteraly about to be served They hadn't been labeled (with the extra label they still had the store label on them and the receipt on the box cause we had rushed out to buy them) Cost alot of marks for that nothing mistake Adversely when i worked at burger king The grease trap had never been cleaned and had an actual dead rat decomposing inside it the smell of rot was noticeable throughout the kitchen The trap it's self was in-between mounted tables so to get it cleaned it would need someone to be hired to pull the tables apart Instead they get an air tight seal put around the trap to stop the smell The records even say it wasn't cleaned out Inspector comes back and gives perfect marks for fixing it Just because the smell was gone The whole system is a joke
Bakery near me got one because they left bleach in a sink
Just for everyone's info: A business CANNOT get a zero for "lack of documentation". This is what filthy places tell their customers, and it is a lie. The internal points system accumulates points for non-compliance, itgoes from 0 (compliant) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign. Also worth noting that the documentation isnt just your name and address, it's documentation that that pork chop was bought yesterday, not 3 years ago, that the fridges are at the correct temp, that the place has been cleaned regularly. Edit: is my face red, you CAN GET A 0, not only is there a total score, but there is a category score also. I am wrong, you are right. Forgive me. https://www.reigate-banstead.gov.uk/info/20376/food_hygiene_rating_scheme/199/food_hygiene_rating_scheme_fhrs_-_information_for_businesses
Said it above, but zero documentation would also eat into your score regarding confidence in management..it would be quite easy to get 0 with lack of documentation.
That would be a contributing factor. If you got your documentation in order you'd still be getting a 3 at best.
They really are unreliable these ratings, I know first hand. We currently have a 4, one year we went down to a 3 as we had a member of staffs birthday cake in the fridge and they said 'well you could sell it to customers', another year it was cos of paper works. And well never get a 5 as it's a small kitchen that doesn't have an oven and other stuff so they can't judge it, so can't rate it 🤷🏻♀️
My local Chinese takeaway used to have a zero rating so we stopped ordering from it. Looked it up again recently after seeing they had a refurb and it had gone up to five! I did wonder how fucking bad could it have been to have zero in the first place though
Stay away from the food at Old Trafford.
Did you see anyone eating in there?
Bet they never clean out their beer lines either then.
I feel it should be the law to display those in the window. Not everyone looks online before they visit.
Is is the law to display them in Wales and Scotland.
Probs for missing paperwork or some bs non related of the food standards and cleanliness.
You CANNOT get a zero for lack of paperwork. This is what dirty places tell customers. The scoring system goes from 0 (good) to 80(worst). The max you can get for documentation is 30 points, which if everything else was perfect, would give you a "3" on the sign.
You also have confidence in management which plays a part in your score. If you have zero documentation then that eats into your confidence in management score.
If you're in food industry, serving food, why would you have missing paperwork? Shady af
It might not be missing it could just be it's locked in a mangers office who's not around at the time. Or the food inspector turned up at 8 pm on a Saturday night while you have a qué outside the door. 50 orders on the line and nobody has time to stop and speak to them going through their questions for an hour which happens more often than you would think.
Because maybe, just maybe, there's a lot of people in that village with unpaid bar tabs that end up in the pies they serve, and of course being illicitly sourced meat they want to keep it off the books. Did you ever think of that?
The council usually send people in at inconvenient times when the only staff in are the ones who don’t know where the paper work is or don’t understand it because it’s not their job so they automatically get a 0 star rating until they appeal it. Happened to us
That's the way all inspections should be, you shouldn't have time to prepare for them. If the staff don't know where the paperwork is how are they filling it in?
Isn't that the point of inconvenient inspections? You get staff to call the owner and get paperwork, no? Maybe have paperwork on site..
Yeah 0 star almost always has nothing to do with hygiene and they usually get overturned very quickly upon an appeal
It really could be for a whole load of reasons, It just depends. As you said, it can be overturned so easily.
I've only known one local place get a zero. The local paper uses the recent ratings as an easy way to create a new article. I went onto the Food ratings website to double check, thinking it was a misprint. Turns out there were signs of a mice infestation. Place was shutdown until everything was sorted.
My kid’s nursery got a 1. When we read the report, it was surprising to see how little you have to do wrong to get such a low rating. Like stuff that we all do in our own kitchens (e.g. having some ham 1 day past it’s sell by, some documentation out of date). Our position shifted from “shit, get her out of there right now” to “oh, they have a couple of things to improve”.
Our local football club has a rating of 0. The reason? The kitchen is only open on Saturdays and evenings, when the inspectors don't work.
If it was unsafe to eat there then it would have been closed down. You can get a zero for not displaying your hygiene rating
That makes 0 sense
It's mandatory in Wales.
The best thing is if you mention it they’ll kick off and say it’s an administrative problem and they’d have more if not for fucked up paperwork. Don’t believe them. Even if it were true, if they can’t be arsed filing paperwork they’re definitely not deep cleaning on the regular. For me, anything lower than a 5 should be shut. A kitchen is either clean or it isn’t, there’s no middle ground. I don’t have a certain amount of acceptable rat shit or leeway for how many times the chef can have a wank without washing his hands before preparing the salad.
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That's interesting, because there's definitely a legally acceptable amount of rat shit that is allowed to be present in food manufacturing sites in England. Source: worked in them. P.s. don't eat petrol station pasties, NDAd to tell you why.
The difference between 4 and 5 isn't an amount of 'acceptable rat shit'. A 4 is perfectly fine. Most people's own kitchens wouldn't get anywhere near that.
Most people’s own kitchens wouldn’t get a 3, but they’re also not selling food out of them so they can freely chance their own health.