Food poisoning, like root canal surgery and fancy dress, really is no fun. At best it’s hellish. At worst, unlike fancy dress, it can be fatal. According to a report from the Food Standards Agency, there were an estimated 2.4m cases of foodborne illness in the UK in 2018, 16,400 of which resulted in hospital admissions. Roughly 180 people died. There can be potentially serious consequences to the poor handling of ingredients, to lousy kitchen hygiene and grossly incompetent cooking.
The question I have been asked is this: to what extent is it my responsibility as a restaurant critic, to protect potential diners from this harm? The question arose because a restaurant upon which I had bestowed a glowing review turned out to have been given a score of just one out of five for food hygiene, meaning major improvement was necessary. I was unaware of this because I did not check the so-called “scores on the doors” before visiting. Full disclosure: I never do.
For the record, I loved the place and suffered no ill-effects. I should add that in more than 23 years of reviewing restaurants I have never suffered food poisoning and a poor hygiene rating does not automatically mean that a meal would be toxic. The Food Standards Agency does not have figures breaking down serious food poisoning by setting. However, anecdotally I suspect the vast majority of it is something we do to ourselves through incompetence in the domestic kitchen. When hospitality businesses poison people it generally results in well-reported court cases. Based on a thorough online search I’m going to say that those are relatively rare compared to the 16,400 hospitalisations a year.
But back to the question. Is it really my job, or the job of any restaurant critic, to study hygiene ratings before writing about a restaurant? My view is no, it isn’t. Hygiene and environmental health are the job of local authorities. If a restaurant’s door is open, if they are legally accepting business, my job is to be the diner and walk through that door. If, having sat down, I see something which troubles me – poor separation of raw and cooked ingredients in an open kitchen, for example, or filthy toilets – sure, I should say so, as any diner might. My job is to be that diner, to tell you just how much pleasure or otherwise your money will buy you. It is not to be a one-person full inspection team.
This applies across so many aspects of the business. I am regularly asked by readers if I will include notes on – deep breath – vegan and/or vegetarian options, gluten-free options, the volume of piped music, the lighting, the accessibility, the tipping policy, employment policies, the staff gender split, whether dogs and children are welcome, sustainability, sourcing, localism, whether a bumbag is an acceptable piece of fashionwear. I may have made one of these up.
If I included all of this, I wouldn’t have enough space in which to write the shimmering, glittering prose that I like to think people read the column for. It would also be extremely dull. If something strikes me as important, I comment on it. I have done so with accessibility and lighting quite recently. If I don’t mention something, then clearly I don’t regard it as an issue. Happily, in the internet age, finding stuff out that seriously matters to you is straightforward. If one of those things is the hygiene rating, then that’s findable too. The fact is, I’m not a health and safety officer. I’m not your last line of defence. I’m a restaurant critic.
