HERE’S A true story from the front line. It begins with a female diner at a city restaurant making a visit to the clearly labelled female toilet. The door is shut and the occupied sign is on. And so she waits…and waits.
Meanwhile, all sorts of noises can be heard from behind the door: banging and clattering and things being moved. What-ever is happening within is no ordinary comfort stop. It sounds more like a complete make-over.
Eventually the door opens and an apologetic male member of staff emerges carrying boxes and cartons of foodstuffs. Our diner enters and finds, right next to the toilet, more boxes plus plastic cartons of frozen food. When she’s finished doing what she wanted to do, the staff member returns and removes those cartons too.
When later asked about the shenanigans in the ladies, our diner is told it provides access to the restaurant’s food storage area. All the clattering and banging was the staff member sorting and fetching supplies. Asked if he thought this was appropriate or hygienic, he gave one of those “whatever” shrugs that implied that was simply how things were—take it or leave it. It was an exercise not normally seen by the restaurant’s patrons and anyway, his manner implied, where’s the harm? It was a classic “out of sight out of mind” incident.
Foodservice has, of course, been notorious for living a double life, in many ways like the world of theatre—all glitz and glamour out front, and a mire of grime and grottiness out the back. Any kitchen-hand has a storehouse of tales that would turn the staunchest stomach of diners quarantined from the realities of what lies behind those swinging doors.
All of which is why the heightened efforts of local and state authorities in the realm of foodservice hygiene are to be applauded. It seems hardly a week goes by without another report of an outlet being fined or penalised for infringing increasingly stringent efforts to keep food safe and healthy.
And in this benighted country where every state jingoistically decides to do its own thing rather than think in the national interest, it is NSW that is really leading. It’s setting an agenda that should define the procedures and policies of a national program to weed out those who jeopardise the reputation of the foodservice industry by putting patrons’ health at risk.
Maybe the other states and territories are being equally as diligent as NSW but they appear to be far less forthcoming about revealing the miscreants or the extent of their findings. And the media does little to help as it tends to report only those “headline” cases of known restaurants or where kitchen misdemeanours had a large-scale effect.
Public awareness cannot be left to depend on the media’s spasmodic reporting of warnings, fines and penalties. This is too haphazard a means of raising alertness to the dangers that lurk within—and tends to let the fringe operators escape the only penalty that counts: customer boycotts of their services and their products.
The double whammy of naming and shaming is the only way to go. The neatly phrased “scores on doors” scheme and the NSW Food Authority’s register of offenders should not exist only within that state’s borders but be applied from coast to coast.
Anyone who has suffered the evils wreaked by just one rotten oyster knows how gut-wrenching ‘off’ food can be. It takes so little to cause so much bodily harm, yet, as our cautionary tale of the food in the toilets demonstrates, there’s still widespread ignorance of what’s required to keep food and customers safe. “She’ll be right, mate,” said the cook as he wiped a finger across his nostril and dipped it in the sauce for a taste. “She sure will,” agreed the waitress, running her hands through her hair before arranging the bread rolls headed for table four.
Small imagined incidents, but they do actually happen on a far too regular basis and the grotty appearance of so many who handle our food does little to engender confidence in much of the foodservice industry.
Our customers tend to be highly suspicious of what goes on behind the scenes but they are powerless to do anything more than eat and hope for a healthy outcome. It’s up to those of us who own and operate foodservice outlets to ensure food handling means much more than a short course certificate at the local TAFE.
It is also way beyond time for a national approach to foodservice hygiene. And in case you were wondering, our diner did let the local authority know about the food store in the toilet. But she won’t be returning to check on the outcome; she is just one more lost customer.
