Hello Steemit!
Many of you probably do not know, but I am a qualified chef who has been working in the industry for a few years. Today I thought I would share with you something many people do not think about, or worse, choose to avoid entirely when eating out.
A very large percentage of restaurants out there are extremely unhygienic and do not comply with health and safety standards. Without having the actual stats, I'm going to guess that roughly 75% of the time you eat out that restaurant would not comply with H&S standards, should an inspector walk in with no warning.
In fact, many restaurants get a decent amount of warning before the inspector shows up, giving the restaurant time to fix obvious issues like fridge temperatures being too high, unhygienic storage of food, unclean cooking equipment and utensils etc.
I will provide a few photos of an un-named place I used to work at here on the Gold Coast.
Because the restaurant gets so busy, they sear off a lot of fish and keep it out on trays throughout service to ensure they can get them out quickly. What doesn't get used gets put straight back into the fridge uncovered (to be served tomorrow) after it sat out for many hours in a 40 degree+ Celsius kitchen.
More of the same..
And another just for your viewing pleasure.
At least some of the stuff here is wrapped.. I guess.
The pictures above are from station food prep fridges. Basically, everything you need for service is in your food prep fridge. Most things (including medium rare chicken. fish, veal etc.) get taken out and left out on the bench from around 11am till about 9pm that evening. These pictures are taken at roughly 10pm before closing.
Now in all fairness, my 75% statistic was probably a little gratuitous, and only from my personal experience, but the purpose of this post was to create awareness, because the industry is overwhelmed with dodgy restaurants. Awareness for where you are eating and what you are putting into your body. I hope that this post does not discourage you from enjoying some of the GREAT foods out there, as many restaurants DO take care of their food in terms of storage and preparation, I'm just saying be aware when you eat out.
Thank you Steemit, I am really loving this platform even though I am still finding my feet. I have a tonne of content to write about. Expect me to share some wake boarding videos from the local park, some knife skill tips, and lots more.
Upvote, resteem and comment if you enjoyed the read.
