Have we done The Khyber Pass?

[MicrosoftBob]

I wonder what the hygiene rating is, of the restaurant up the Oxo Tower

[DimPrawn]

I wonder what the hygiene rating is, of the restaurant up the Oxo Tower

It's a 5.

Up the OXO tower

[FatLazyContractor]

I wonder what the hygiene rating is, of the restaurant up the Oxo Tower

MF dines there a lot. I'd wait for his reviews

[NickFitz]

Wonder what rating Nick's local Chinese takeaway has !!

he does eat a lot from there

I know it used to be a 5, but I think it dropped a point for some reason a year or two ago

The trouble with those ratings is that they conflate an awful lot of stuff. There's a chip shop near here I've been using for over twenty years. It's family-run, and everything there is fine; nobody's ever been made ill by any of their food that I'm aware of. Yet every time it's inspected it loses a mark for "poor record keeping" - records that might make sense in the context of running a KFC franchise with a constantly changing staff of young people sent along by the JobCentre who stay about two days each, but which are completely irrelevant to a husband and wife who have spent all day, every day in the shop for over thirty years.

There was a place up the road that, again, had excellent standards, and very good food, and never once made anybody ill. They got marked down for having a dirty store room. It didn't matter that the "store room" was on an upper floor that was unused, locked, and nobody who worked at the shop ever went in there - it was theoretically possible for the owner (who was the only person who had access to a key for it) to go upstairs, unlock the door, and put food in there; so they got sanctioned for it.

So when I see that a place has 3 out of 5, I'd like to know if they lost points because the chef pissed in the soup, or because the owner didn't make a written note of the temperature of some pies he knew would be cooked and sold within hours, or because the inspector thought the wallpaper in the office up two flights of stairs from where the food is made might be hard to keep clean.

[Ticktock]

So when I see that a place has 3 out of 5, I'd like to know if they lost points because the chef pissed in the soup, or because the owner didn't make a written note of the temperature of some pies he knew would be cooked and sold within hours, or because the inspector thought the wallpaper in the office up two flights of stairs from where the food is made might be hard to keep clean.

Pissing in the soup only gets you marked down to a three? I might have to start using the website more and make sure I stick to fours or fives - I guess that means the worst you'll get is a little spittle, or perhaps a plaster that's come off someone's finger.