A walk down any street in Bengaluru’s bustling neighbourhoods means fragrant smells tickling your nose and beckoning you into Instagram-perfect cafes and restaurants offering so much variety that you may wonder if they are hiding a cornucopia back there? But when the Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) pulled back the curtains during its recent raids, what they found was far less appetising -- mould, rotten and expired meat, fish, vegetables and dairy. Especially with several star restaurants making the news for hundreds of kilograms of subpar food found in their kitchen, Bengalureans were left shaken. But as the dust settles, how have the industry and the city’s foodies responded? We asked Bengalureans if this has made them wary of eating out, if they have shrugged it off and whether the crackdown will push restaurants to prioritise food hygiene.
Restaurants deal with a huge amount of perishable inventory. Products come in every day, different teams handle them, and there is constant movement between freezers, chillers, prep areas and kitchens. Small lapses can happen, but finding dozens of kilograms of rotten meat, fungus-covered produce or food that has been sitting in cold storage for months looks like a serious breakdown in basic controls. However, it’s important not to paint the entire industry with the same brush; there are thousands of restaurants in Bengaluru that take food safety extremely seriously. The raids have highlighted the worst cases, not necessarily the average restaurant. There is a sense of nervousness across the industry, but this is also a good wake-up call. The best outcome would be for food safety to become part of the culture of running a restaurant rather than something you prepare for when an inspector walks in.
We started noticing the raids when they started in Maharashtra and were happy because these are the standards that are needed. None of us expected the news coming out of Bengaluru; though mistakes can happen, [this scale of] rotten meat and vegetables feels deliberate. It’s due to a lack of internal enforcement. Especially in star restaurants where they hire hotel management graduates, you expect better. In the long term, these raids will have an effect only if continuously done. If it happens now and not again for another few years, people will go back to the default. I also think we need a system like the US’ Food & Drug Administration, which checks restaurants and gives them a grade that has to be displayed at the front.
Internationally, Indian food, especially street food, has a negative reputation for being unhygienic but the defence has always been that we have all kinds of food. News like this has shattered a bit of that respect. People around me have changed their attitudes towards eating out; they’re more sceptical and pickier now. How much of the five-star tag comes from a genuine passion for food and how much of it is just the prestige of the name? Rather than such tags, I’ll now prioritise going to places I’m interested in and where it feels like the restaurant is equally interested in what they are serving.
I’m definitely more conscious about where I eat. Earlier, I would choose a restaurant based on what is trending, whether it looked good on the gram or if the interiors were cute. Before the raids, I didn’t think about what happened in the kitchen unless something was visibly wrong with my plate, but now it’s always going to be running in the back of my mind. People in Bengaluru love eating out and life is so busy here that it’s unavoidable. I think people will become more selective rather than completely withdrawing from these restaurants.
I eat out around thrice a week and don’t think this will change the frequency, but it may change the type of restaurants I visit. I would prefer more transparent restaurants where I can see into the kitchen or where the food is made in front of me. As someone who eats from lots of local places, I go there knowing the risk that it may not be fully hygienic, but if I’m paying three-star or five-star prices, I put more trust into them for basic hygiene. Now, that trust is breached. In the long term, seeing the impact this has had on brand reputation, I feel like they will fix this and overall hygiene quality across Bengaluru will improve.
The raids have been an eye-opener for all of us to be aware and make sure that this becomes a regular affair of proper inspection and doesn’t just go down as a stunt for politicians. Well begun is half done, though, so I hope it continues and the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) brings in a method of quality checks as we have for petrol bunks. Hygiene standards should not be just on paper, but backed by strict actions and penalties.