What to Look for When Eating Out

Here are some tips on what to look out for when choosing somewhere to eat out or buy a takeaway.

Look for the Food Hygiene Rating

It is now easier to find out if a restaurant, takeaway or food shop you want to eat at or buy food from has good food hygiene standards. You can check food hygiene ratings online or look for the rating scheme window stickers:

• Check Food Hygiene Ratings

But the scheme is new and some businesses may be awaiting an inspection and not yet rated. And sometimes standards can fall at premises since the last inspection when the premises was rated.

This page has practical tips on what signs of good hygiene to look for, and in this section you can find out how to complain about a food premises:

• Complain about a Food Premises

Signs of Good Hygiene Practices

• Clean public areas

• Staff wash their hands regularly between different tasks (like handling raw meat and then ready-to-eat-foods or cleaning and clearing tables and then going on to serve ready-to-eat foods)

• Hot food is served hot and cooked right the way through, unless it has been ordered otherwise.

• Cold food is served cold

• On a carvery, salad bar or delicatessen counter, dishes of food are not just topped-up, but the whole dish changed

• If you can see into the kitchen as doors open or behind servery areas they are clean and reasonably tidy

• Clean and smart looking staff who are dressed for the job

Warning Signs of Poor Hygiene

• Overflowing waste bins and dirty or untidy rubbish areas

• Dirty looking staff, with dirty hands or fingernails or dirty habits

• Staff wearing dirty overalls, uniforms or aprons and long hair that is not tied back

• Dirty toilets and wash-hand basins and a lack of soap and toilet paper

• Dirty tables, cutlery, crockery and glassware

• Hair, insects or other matter in the food

• Food on sale past its 'use-by' date

• Raw foods (especially raw meat) stored right next to cooked foods or the same utensils used for both.

It is best to base your judgement on a few of the above clues, but several of the warning signs spotted can represent poor management and sloppy hygiene standards.

What To Do If You are Concerned about Hygiene Standards

• Complain to the manager or owner of the business

• Report the business to an Environmental Health Officer in the council's food safety team

• Take your business elsewhere