Heston Blumenthal, consistently rated as one of the top chefs in the world recently closed his UK restaurant The Fat Duck due to food poisoning allegations. More than 400 customers canceled reservations immediately, 500 past customers were said to be affected and the spin-off negative publicity might have done long term damage to his brand and business.

According to the Health Inspector’s Report:

“The outbreak continued for at least six weeks because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant. Such transmission could have occurred either through continuous contamination of the foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners, or a mixture of both mechanisms.”

The incident will however leave a bit of a bad aftertaste as the investigation by the health board did find that some of the staff who also had contracted the virus might have returned to work too soon and the whole incident is estimated to have cost Blumenthal over £500,000 in lost business.

There are very few businesses that could withstand such an impact.

If you want to avoid food poisoning in your own kitchen, have a look at this information on food hygiene. It’s a series of articles broadly similar to the course offered by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health for its Food Hygiene Certificate.

Something tells me that the title of this post is going to pique a lot of interest in what I could be talking about here. For those of you who have arrived here in the hope of catching a glimpse of something risque, you may be disappointed, but that will depend on your interpretation of risque!

This blog post is aimed at bars and restaurants that expose their kitchens and preparation workspaces for the public to see. Maybe I’m a little bit paranoid when I say that I don’t like when my food and drinks are prepared FAR from my inquisitive eyes and so I love to see an exposed kitchen or preparation area because it means I can run very fast if I see something I don’t like.

Conversely, when I see a clean exposed kitchen, I’m thrilled! It’s a bit like a dirty toilet in a bar. If management are willing to allow public areas remain dirty, then what’s happening behind the scenes? [...]