Kitchen checks give restaurants, hotels food for thought

New Delhi: Multiple restaurants and cafés across the country have started voluntarily shutting outlets temporarily to deep-clean kitchens and improve hygiene standards as panic grips the industry amid intensified crackdowns and shutdowns by national and state regulators over hygiene, food safety and labelling violations.

Several chains have stopped or reduced the use of artificial food colours in Chinese dishes and stepped up staff training even as some establishments forced to shut down are pursuing legal action.

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The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), which represents over 500,000 restaurants, cafes and bars, is also asking members to double down on hygiene checks and safety training.

“We are doubling down on training programmes, including our flagship Food Safety Supervisor Training and Certification (FoS Tac),” NRAI president Sagar Daryani said. “The programme is done annually. We plan to double this, post August 15.”

Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA), led by commissioner Tukaram Mundhe, has suspended licences of several restaurants and clubs, including gourmet chain Punjab Grill, Aditya Birla New Age Hospitalityoperated Flint & Waarsa, Cricket Club of India (CCI), Parsi Dairy Farm, MIG Cricket Club and Willingdon Sports Club, alleging lapses such as expired food products, pests, mouldy vegetables, poor food storage and improper food labelling.

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In Karnataka also, the state Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) officials found violations of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulations including expired meat and milk and inferior storage systems at some five-star hotels in Bengaluru, including The Lalit Ashok, Four Seasons, Vivanta Whitefield, Radisson Blu and Shangri-La over this weekend.

Biswajit Chakraborty, general manager at Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru at Embassy ONE, clarified that no stock was seized from the hotel and that there was a labelling issue. “During a recent review by the FSSAI, the hotel received a 96% compliance rating,” he said. “The observation related to the shelf-life labelling of certain imported frozen specialty meat products, which remained within the manufacturer-indicated date range.” He said the hotel has initiated “precautionary measures advised by the authorities.”

The crackdown is also changing restaurant menus and, in some cases, the colour of their cuisines. Hundreds of social media posts from diners in Mumbai posting on Instagram and Twitter said products such as Chinese bhel and chicken lollipops have “turned yellow” and are no longer the same red colour, tagging and thanking FDA.

“After Mumbai, now we have told our staff to stop using Carmoisine in our restaurants in Delhi-NCR too, even though it is a permitted synthetic food colour under regulations,” a senior executive at a national Asian cuisine chain said on condition of anonymity.

There is also a surge in litigation. “Companies are approaching law firms as enforcement actions can have immediate and significant commercial consequences, including product recalls, restrictions on sale, mandatory changes to labels and packaging, and disruption of established brands,” said Karun Mehta, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co. “Companies are seeking legal advice on the merits of such actions. Where such actions are found to be legally unsustainable, they are being challenged before the courts, seeking urgent reliefs to prevent business disruption.”

Also read: FDA inspects Bombay High Court canteens

Mumbai’s famous six-decade old Udupi eatery Poornima Restaurant in Fort — which counts top industrialists and the who’s who of Bombay House among its clients — moved the Bombay High Court and got its licence suspension revoked.

The court in an interim order on July 31 directed FDA to conduct a fresh inspection and the matter will be heard on August 12. Poornima Restaurant has accused the FDA of procedural lapses.

The state regulator had suspended its licence on July 23, the same day of the inspection.