Episode 7 Food Fighters

We're a nation of food lovers and today there's more choice than ever.

Whether eating in or taking away, there's always the chance something can go wrong.

It's a good job there's an army of people working hard to keep us safe.

They're the food fighters.

I'm from environmental health.

Will this takeaway be as good as it says it is?

No business is perfect.

They're supposed to record any problems in there.

HE SNIFFS So, now I'll do an inspection and find out what problems we've got.

We meet a food detective who investigates what's lurking in our lunch.

We get sharp pieces of glass,

we get hypodermic syringes, er...

we'll get insects, rodents.

And it's all very well looking after food on the ground...

But there's one place where the dangers of food poisoning are particularly heightened - up there.

In Britain, there's a takeaway on a street near us all.

In fact, we are Europe's largest consumer of fast food.

But while these places are a great place to refuel quickly,

who's there to make sure that speed also means satisfaction?

Each local authority has its own team of environmental health officers.

It's their job to ensure takeaway food is safe for us to eat.

From kebabs to pizzas, fried chicken to burgers,

There's a takeaway for all tastes on the high street.

This is quick, high-volume food which still has to meet the standards of our food fighters.

Today, Oxford environmental health inspector Richard Kuziara has pizza in his sights.

-Hiya.

-Hi.

-I'm from the City Council. Are you the manager?

-Yes.

Richard. Nice to meet you.

Food inspectors award stars depending on the business's hygiene and cleanliness.

The best get five stars. But, at its last inspection, this pizza joint got one.

Richard wants to see if the staff have done enough to raise their game.

Right. Talk me through it. What have we got?

There are two things this takeaway needs to improve - storage,

keeping their food safe from bugs and bacteria,

and hygiene, the basic but vital hand-washing.

First up, where the pizza toppings are stored.

What we are looking for is to make sure the food is at or below eight degrees.

Erm, between eight and 63 degrees, we call that the danger zone.

That's when bacteria can multiply.

As you start to get towards body temperature, around 37,

bacteria can double every ten to 20 minutes.

The sauce should be below eight degrees.

Any warmer, and there could be trouble with this topping.

It's running slightly high. It's running at 11.

There's no imminent danger to public health,

but it's something the owner needs to keep a lid on.

When it comes to the pizza dough, the owner's fortunes start to rise.

Great. This is just all the dough. How long does it stay in here for?

-Er, maximum of two days.

-Two days. OK.

-And you make your own dough?

-Yes.

-Great.

The state of the veg is pretty good, too.

It's all nice fresh stuff you've got. I think stuff like this is good.

I think it all needs a little bit of a clean, though.

All in all, this is a pretty good start to the inspection.

But there's still more that Richard needs to scrutinise.

Takeaways are busiest on weekends and evenings.

Over in the market town of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, it's the calm before the storm.

Inspector Richard Hutchinson is dropping in on Marmaris takeaway where food prep has just begun.

-It's Richard Hutchinson from environmental health.

-Yes.

-Are you Erkan?

-I am, yes.

-All right.

I am here to do a routine food hygiene inspection.

Marmaris serves up both pizza and kebabs.

It's near the top end with four stars,

but one wrong move and it could slide down the scale.

OK. I'll have a little look at that, then.

First up for scrutiny are the all-important food safety records.

As part and parcel of the law,

not only must they have written practices,

they must be implemented and maintained in practice.

It's no good just writing a load of stuff in a book,

if you don't then follow it.

This is where the business will make its commitment on paper to food safety.

So, part and parcel of my job is to audit them against that.

So, whatever it says in there -

is what I am looking for, the evidence of that.

Is what they are doing?

And, unfortunately, this paperwork is a little past its shelf-life.

Let's see if I can find the front of this.

Have you got any more up to date than this?

Unfortunately, they ran out.

I went to the council and they said we will send them to you.

I understand that, but, ultimately, it is your responsibility.

According to where they carried out the opening and closing checks,

the business is perfect and has been going back to when that was last filled in.

Erm, no business is perfect.

They are supposed to record any problems in there. HE SNIFFS

So, now, I'll do an inspection and find out what problems we've got.

Time for Richard to have a poke around.

Er, I just want to see where your bins are.

It's a bit of rubbish job.

If you tend to leave your lid open and there is food waste, you get a bit of smell.

If you get bit of smell, you'll attract rats and mice.

At this stage, I will advise you you need to keep your lid shut, OK,

to stop any smells getting about and also to stop any rats and mice getting in.

Your biggest problem and issue is that if you attract rats and mice here by leaving your bin open,

it will be a matter of time before they start going that way

and you are leaving yourself open, potentially, to rats and mice coming into your business.

If they come in, there will be one outcome - I will shut you down.

Round the corner, Richard spots a tub of uncovered fat,

which could be a potential lure for rodents.

This food fighter knows about rats' eating habits.

At night time, make sure you cover it, because one of the things with rats is they will eat anything.

Especially in winter, one of the best sources of food for them is oil and fat.

It's good for their coats and it provides such a lot of energy.

There's plenty here to welcome rats and mice into the backyard.

But, can they get inside?

Rodents can squeeze through a gap no wider than pencil.

That's fine, I can't get that through there, that's OK.

Richard's happy that these well-sealed doors mean a roaming rat would have no chance.

The owner must take away some of the rubbish if he wants to keep hold of his four stars.

Later, Richard will find out if the state of the inside is any better.

Back in Oxford, Richard's namesake has moved from storage to surfaces at a Pizza Roma.

This computer is a cause for concern.

Ahmed, bear in mind that everything in a business is the food-contact surface.

Yeah? It's a hand-contact surface.

So, these, every now and again... You said you had wipes for the thermometer,

just get the keyboard cleaned up.

It's far from filthy, but there are health risks,

especially when food is mixed with general storage.

What I'm saying here is, I've got flour here,

I've got, erm, spray with bleach.

Bleach here. I've got food. Erm, is that a prayer mat? A coat.

Do you know what I mean? Let's get it all separated.

So, at the end of the visit,

has Pizza Roma risen to the food fighters' challenge?

The scores on the doors - the good news is you've gone up.

I've shifted you from one star to two stars.

So, food standards here are now ranked as fair.

It's the improvement Ahmed wanted

and now he hopes to continue to move up the scale.

To be honest, I'm not saying I'm happy.

I was thinking to get more than two stars.

But, that means we are in the right direction.

So, that is good.

Later, fishing out an unwelcome surprise.

This could be a piece of mould, which does change

the situation completely.

Food safety is important everywhere.

But there's one place where the dangers of food poisoning are particularly heightened.

Up there.

When we jet off on holiday, the last thing we want is

a touch of dodgy belly before we've even touched down.

So how do airlines keep their familiar trays of food free from food poisoning?

This is Gate Gourmet, one of the world's largest suppliers of airline food.

Every day, from their British base at Heathrow,

they produce over 40,000 meals for 12 different airlines.

Making sure these meals are all safe is this woman.

My name is Aditi Zutshi and it is my job to make sure

that all the food safety controls are in place.

And I'm being followed.

Aditi's food fighting starts at the beginning,

with the sourcing of the ingredients.

Today she's at the factory of one of her main suppliers.

She's checking how they handle pineapple to make sure they are doing it safely.

First up, though, are the quality control checks.

This is mainly a vision check.

Just look at the colour, and look at any signs of bruises.

They check for damage, and then check for sugar levels.

Take a sample of the pineapple.

The unit of measurement for sugar content in fruit is the Brix.

A measurement between 12 and 17 Brix would mean this pineapple is perfectly sweet.

Yeah. I can see that the Brix level is reading at 12. So that's good.

However, the real proof of pineapple quality is in the eating.

What should be perfect pineapple taste like?

Sweet, a bit of sharpness, a bit of acidity.

It should be a pleasure eating pineapple.

-That was really good.

-It's good news,

but means nothing if pineapples here make passengers sick.

And you are not going to believe what this fruit has to go through to make it safe for public consumption.

And it begins with a bath.

First of all, we are removing all the debris and residue from the surface of the pineapple

which could potentially contaminate the flesh of the pineapple on the inside

that is the eatable part of the pineapple.

That would be during cutting, so when you cut it...

It's critical. If we don't do washing effectively here,

we wouldn't be able to maintain food safety.

You wash the pineapples whole?

You don't cut them before you wash them?

You don't cut them before washing. Also, microbes are reduced by chlorine.

Right.

The unpeeled pineapple is bathed in a chlorine solution

to kill any germs lurking there.

For this to work, staff must regularly check the chlorine levels are high.

Every hour, the chlorine test is done again,

and then, at the end of the day, confirm that the chlorine dip is working.

After its bath, the pineapple takes a shower.

This blast away other loitering nasties.

Only then is it ready to be cut.

So once it's washed, what's happening next then?

The next step is the pineapple is decanted into the containers here,

and our highly-skilled staff will manually chop all the pineapple here.

Because the pineapples are clean on the outside,

there's no danger of this knife taking bacteria from the husk and polluting the flesh.

Now the pineapple can be added to fruit mixes and boxed up.

But that's not the end of the checks.

After they're sealed, it goes through the metal detector,

therefore we make sure none of our products have any metal detectable contamination.

No-one wants to find a screw or a knife blade in a pot of pineapple.

So this final stage is vital.

I'm extremely pleased that all the safety controls that should be in place are in place,

and they're being followed which we have clearly seen today.

So, that's how airline foods are safely sourced and processed.

But now, I want to find out about that crucial next step,

how that familiar tray of airline food is actually put together.

I've come to Gate Gourmet's main processing plant, to follow the fruit as it comes in.

But before I'm allowed to snoop around,

it's time to slip into something a little more glamorous.

The food fighters here don't want me bringing any

food poisoning nasties into their nice clean factory.

Now I'm safe to go into the building and hopefully,

I'm just in time to see a delivery being checked in.

This is where all the food arrives, up to 100 lorry loads every day.

Every single item must be checked in and checked over.

And overseeing it all once again is Aditi.

Hi, Aditi, how are you?

-Hi, Simon, nice to meet you.

-What have we got coming in?

We've got some pre-prepared fruits coming in from our supplier which will get plated up later on.

Pre-prepared, meaning it's had a certain amount of process gone into it.

It's pre-prepared things like grapefruit segments, melon,

all of that's prepared to go into the system.

When it comes in, what things are you looking for?

This is our first step in the process.

The most important check to make sure what we get into the building,

is at the right temperatures, the right use by date,

the right shelf-life requirement, right quality.

When you've got 300 passengers up in the air at 30,000 ft,

you can't afford to make any errors and this is where it all starts.

We make sure what we get in from our suppliers is correct and the right standard for quality.

What kind of things can go wrong from this point?

If we've seen it come out of the dispatch point

and the checks have been done there,

in the interim period from it coming on the road to this point,

what's the most likely that can go wrong?

The most likely thing is temperature.

Although the vehicle's temperature controlled, it could fail in the transportation process

which would lead to product temperatures going up

and obviously we'd not be able to accept it because it's not at the right temperature.

At the moment as this has come in, is there anything that's not up to spec so far?

I think we've got a problem with a couple of things which we'll have to reject and send back.

Sandwiches and one of the food trays because it's not up to the right spec.

So that's rather than health and safety point of view,

-that's a quality point of view?

-Yes.

-Can we have a look?

-Yes, definitely.

Even though Aditi is happy with safety systems at her suppliers,

she still rejects individual fruit.

Quality of the oranges, picked up by our QC chef.

This will be sent back to the supplier.

So, it's a quality issue, not a safety one.

She's not happy passengers will accept an orange that's not orange.

But the rest of the food can now be wheeled into the kitchen,

and we're going to follow it.

This is where those familiar dishes of fruit and salad are put together.

The aim is for every passenger to get exactly the same.

This is where the fruit is put into individual portions.

What kind of hazards can happen here?

You've always got physical, chemical and microbiological,

but the main one would be microbiological.

-Meaning?

-Meaning, increase in bacterial count of the food

which could give you nasty diseases if it's not controlled properly.

So how do you prevent that?

This is a temperature controlled area.

-I've noticed that. We're working in a fridge, basically.

-Yes.

The temperature here's less than 15, so that's our first control.

Although the product comes out of the fridge,

it still stays in a controlled environment.

It comes out of the fridge and it's got up to 90 minutes,

to stay out here and be handled and then go back into a fridge.

And now that this has all been portioned and the lids go on,

this goes straight onto the airline? We're happy with this now?

We're happy, this is what the economy passenger gets for breakfast.

-Looks nice.

-Yeah.

So, the fruit is ready to fly, but what about the main course?

Later, I'll be finding out how they make the hot stuff.

A difficult balancing act keeping these meals safe.

What you've got to be careful of when temperature monitoring, don't let it get too cold,

because these babies are that fierce that they can freeze.

And a backyard banquet for some unwelcome guests.

This is for the oil.

HE SIGHS

OK. What I'm concerned with here is rats coming.

Things like that, that's a proper rat snack, that.

Now, have you ever found something in your dinner that really shouldn't be there?

A hair, maybe a plaster or a fingernail?

What do you do if you do find something dodgy in your dish?

There's one food fighting detective who'll take up your case

and find out exactly what's lurking in your lunch.

Staffordshire County Council Scientific Services HQ.

This laboratory is filled with all manner of weird and wonderful specimens.

If you've found something nasty in your dinner,

this is where it would come.

It'd be down to the doctor with a chart-topping name to investigate.

My name is Doctor Frank Hollywood,

and it's my job to look for foreign bodies in your food.

# When two tribes go to war

# A point is all that you can score. #

That's right, it's war.

War against dodgy food.

Frank is a public analyst on the frontline of that war

to keep our food safe to eat.

Our job, it is very important because we've got to make sure

food in the supermarkets, in the shops, is fit for consumption.

As head of the science team, when it comes to foreign bodies,

Dr Hollywood really has seen it all.

We get sharp pieces of glass, pieces of wood, plastic, metal.

We get hypodermic syringes, we get insects, rodents.

By us testing this, generating reports,

it is a policing of manufacturers and shopkeepers

to make sure they get their jobs right.

Right, now we've got that out of our system,

let's see what's on the manky menu for today.

And it's this cake, thought to contain a piece of chewing gum.

Obviously somebody has been biting into it,

and they've come across a foreign body,

it didn't feel right and they've spat it out

and they've noticed that it looked different to the rest of the cake.

So we've got to identify what the foreign object is.

Of course, there's always the chance that the mystery item

was planted by the consumer.

But Frank has a way of flushing out a hoax.

With this, we can see there's lots of pastry and sugar,

and it's strongly adhering to the product,

so it has been baked with a cake such as this,

so it's looking genuine at the moment.

Dr Hollywood is far too experienced to jump to conclusions about what this is.

He places the object in warm water to see how it reacts.

And we can see the sugar is dissolving,

some of the pastry is separating,

but there is a foreign object which is still there.

But as Dr Hollywood begins to prod and poke around,

the idea that this is chewing gum begins to fall apart.

I've broken it into many fragments,

and it looks as though it is just a hardened piece of pastry,

which the consumer thought was a complaint,

he thought it was a piece of chewing gum,

but it's just a dehydrated piece of pastry, so it's been overcooked.

So that's not desirable, but there is no contamination.

OK, so that turned out to be a false alarm,

but Dr Frank Hollywood can't relax.

This chocolate milkshake has just arrived

after a customer complained that there was mould in it.

Mould can arise from different organisms,

and these organisms can produce toxic metabolites,

and so it's toxic to humans.

A mouldy milkshake just won't do,

so this calls for closer inspection.

I can't see any obvious signs of any mould at the moment.

There is some bacteria, but obviously...

there's always some natural amount of bacteria present in food.

It seems that the coast is clear,

but just then the doctor discovers that something is indeed lurking in the bottle.

This...

..could be a piece of mould, which does change the situation completely.

But this is no measly piece of mould.

A mould like this indicates that the contaminant has been there for some time,

so it hasn't been a couple of days, it's been weeks.

Dr Hollywood takes a sample,

and this will be sent off for more tests.

So that will be labelled up, it'll be stored in an incubator,

and in two or three days we'll see what's grown.

And a few days later the results did come back.

They proved that the milkshake had been sold after its use-by date

and the customer received compensation.

But Dr Hollywood's war is a never-ending one,

and he'll continue his detective work,

hunting out those nasty little surprises none of us want to find.

Later, the food fighters making sure speed doesn't make us sick.

I think when there's a big queue, and people have had a few to drink,

and want it fast, that's when there's pressure to put stuff out too early,

so it'll be interesting to see how they deal with that, what they do.

Earlier we saw how pineapple and other fruits and salads

are prepared for their journey to the skies.

Along the way, they face numerous safety checks before finally hitting your tray.

So all the fruit and salad stuff is ready to go on to the food trays,

but what about the hot stuff?

If you think that airline food is all processed junk,

you're in for a bit of a surprise.

The airline food here is largely cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients.

This is Gate Gourmet's main kitchen.

As you can see, it's a big production unit.

They can make somewhere in the region of 800 different products every day.

Like all big kitchens, it's got an executive chef who calls all the shots.

Time to meet him.

My name is Jim Hedrick, executive chef and head of quality control.

My job is to ensure the food leaves this building

to the highest possible standards.

Jim, I'd imagine that an awful lot of people, when they think of airline food,

wouldn't imagine they'd go to a kitchen and see a huge wok range like this.

No, well, what Mr Lee's doing here, he's actually cooking the pak choi

for a Chinese airline,

so we have Chinese chefs specifically for the Chinese airlines,

and we do the same throughout the kitchen,

we'll have specific chefs for specific airlines on route specifics,

like India, Middle East, Africa and the Americas.

Rather than you and I, who would have an idea of what would go on with a stir fry,

I guess our knowledge isn't quite the same as Mr Lee's?

No, no. I mean, you do get...

Specific food does get westernised over time,

so what we have to do is menu develop

using authentic Chinese ingredients,

using Chinese chefs to Chinese recipes,

based on the customer.

This is an impressive piece of kit you've got.

This has been brought in especially for us from Hong Kong.

Mainly because the ones that are built in Europe and the UK

don't get that specific power.

If you have a look at the water on top there,

that is to cool the whole work station down because it gets too hot.

You need that pure heat to get the spices going,

to get the herbs going, and to get the full flavour through.

To use a very good analogy,

they've got the power of a jet engine, that gas under there.

-I've never used one of these, I'd like to have a go.

-Yes, of course.

-Mr Lee, would you let Simon have a go?

-Yeah, OK.

This is fantastic, the power you can feel in this fella.

It's like a jet engine actually firing up under it,

which gives you that instant heat

that actually generates the flavours.

The Chinese always like those sort of flavours.

What about things like the safety of stuff like this?

What do you do in terms of safety checks?

What we have to do is once the dish is finished,

we will go in and probe it to make sure it meets the correct core temperature

based on our food safety standards.

And, just like in my kitchens,

food has to be above 85 degrees to be safe.

With this, we're going to be up at 95,

so that can now come off

because we want to be careful we don't overcook it.

As you can still see, it's got the colour,

-still looking nice and fresh, nice and vibrant.

-Beautiful.

I tell you what, there's some very, very lucky customers this time.

This stir-fry is destined to be served on tomorrow's flight from Heathrow to Hong Kong.

That is, if it passes the taste test at the top table.

Interesting. So what's this then?

What we do here is the top table testing.

The chef de parties of the kitchen taste every product that is cooked.

-Every day?

-Every product, every day. Seven days a week, 365 a year.

What they do then is they put that in this sheet here, sign it off.

The chef signs it off first, then the chef de partie

and then I'll come up with the quality control team

and we'll countersign to see if it's right.

That could mean tasting up to 800 dishes daily!

If you'd like to help yourself to something to eat.

It's a skilled job because food tastes different in the air.

Our taste buds are dulled by up to 30% by altitude,

so plane food must be anything but plain.

That's delicious.

That's the lamb Berber for the Middle Eastern routes.

-Once things have been cooked...

-Yeah.

..it must be important to get them right down to temperature to stop bacteria forming.

It does.

The chef that brings the sample here also goes to this table,

where he writes down the core temperature to start off with.

From there, we walk through into the blast chiller.

-Can we look in the blast chiller?

-Of course.

Chilly in here!

Now, blast chilling.

Why do we blast-chill products rather than allowing them to cool in a normal refrigerator?

It's all to do with bacteria.

We cannot allow the food to stay hot for long because as it comes down,

it allows that optimum temperature for the bacteria to multiply,

which of course in itself will cause us problems.

These blast chillers are all about getting the food

down below eight degrees as quickly as possible

because once the food is down there, ideally at five degrees or so,

no bacteria stands a chance.

If we'd cooked off, say, some salmon,

what's the time that you have to get that down to a specific temperature?

The guidelines are between 65 and five degrees within four hours,

but obviously some things will come down quicker than that.

You've got to be careful that when you're temperature monitoring,

you don't allow it to come down too cold

because these babies are that fierce that they can freeze,

so the guys that are doing the blast chilling are very important in the industry

because they can either take it out when it's too hot or take it out when it's frozen.

Frozen affects the quality.

It's good on the food safety but on the quality, it's not so good.

Now the food has reached a temperature where germs can't breed.

All of it is moved to the assembly area.

Again, this is chilled to keep bacteria at bay.

We've seen the whole process from the goods arriving

to them being cooked, everything going through the system.

Now, how do you ensure that all the passengers get the same food?

The assemblers will put the steaks in each individual component,

which is weighed and based on this touch-screen,

she'll look at the spec, she'll make a golden sample

and put it beside the specification so she's got a visual aid

that she can check, that every one will be virtually the same.

Obviously your steaks will differ in size, but generally we'll be

working to the specification which has been agreed by the customer.

And at this point, are we still looking out for any issues that might arise with the food?

We'll be looking at quality issues that may have happened in the kitchen.

They may have overcooked the beans, they may have not mixed correctly the potatoes

but we have a quality control chef that monitors that anyway

and feeds back to the production department.

Obviously this is being assembled cold

so cooking on the plane, what happens then?

The girls will actually put the meals together, they'll wrap them

and they'll put on the ovens.

The ovens then will be put on the trolleys, taken from here

and put on the aircraft, where the crew will actually heat them up,

ready for the passenger to eat.

From this point on, the food is kept in these chilled oven trolleys.

Throughout its trip to the plane, Food Fighters must maintain the chill chain,

so that everything stays cool in dispatch and on to the lorries.

And if you think you face a lot of checks before flying,

it's nothing compared to your dinner.

Pizza, fried chicken or maybe a Chinese.

We all have our favourites when it comes to fast food

and if the figures are to be believed, we eat it in abundance.

As a nation, we spend up to £7 million a day on takeaways

so our Food Fighters need to make sure our money's going into safe hands.

Let's catch up with the two environmental health officers

battling to keep food safety at the top of the takeaway menus.

It's mid-afternoon in Oxford.

The town's fast-food restaurants are gearing up for another busy night.

Environmental health inspector Richard Kuziara continues his fight

to make sure quick also means quality.

Whatcha.

Today he's checking up on Branos Fried Chicken

to see if its good three-star rating is deserved.

The risks with fried food are really quite low.

Because it's often pressure cooked at extremely high temperature,

the chances of getting food poisoning from something like this is fairly limited.

But they've got shish kebabs and things like that,

so handling of raw products, making sure it's cooked properly.

When there's a big queue and people have had a few to drink and want it fast,

that's when there's pressure to perhaps put stuff out too early,

so it'll be interesting to see how they deal with that.

Richard's first impressions are promising.

Already it's looking smarter than when I was last here.

With such a high turnover of food,

takeaway temperature control is vital.

Richard's keen to make sure the thermometers here are working by comparing readings.

Let's do the same one and then we'll see what it comes out as

and we'll see if they roughly come out the same.

The temperature's good, that's the main thing.

Yeah. It's working.

So yours is good enough.

The poultry's perfect. Time to catch up with the kebabs.

Kebabs are cooked from the outside in, so it's important any doners they dish out are done so with care.

When did this go on? When will it get thrown away?

What happens to it at the end of the night? That kind of stuff.

We sell every day one of these.

So every day, you have a fresh one?

Every day, fresh one.

OK, good. Right.

Do you cook it for a certain amount of time? Do you cut into it?

-No. We cut them into small slices and we see everything is ready.

-OK.

And you do that with all of them or just some of them?

-All of them.

-OK.

So you cut into it and check it's thoroughly cooked? Good.

What I'm concerned about is when you're busy,

a lot of people come in and they've had a few drinks.

There's pressure to serve it quickly, that you're just...

-We always check it.

-OK, good.

Next up, hand washing,

and this takeaway really is cleaning up in this area.

The basin is operated by knee.

I like the way you've got the no-hands.

What we've got here is with chicken, it's really often a very heavily contaminated product

just cos of the nature of the way chicken's produced,

so here they're covering all the chicken, handling it lots.

The last thing you want is all chicken blood, salmonella,

getting all over tap handles.

What we've got here is a knee-operated wash-hand basin.

The opportunity for cross-contamination is much reduced.

Very rare that people put their knee in the food.

Branos seems to be up there with the best takeaways

but will this good news continue when Richard heads out back?

Right.

Over at the Marmaris in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire,

Richard Hutchinson's inspection is turning into a game of two halves.

While outside scored a bit of an own goal, inside is faring much better.

-When was that last pulled out?

-Sunday.

The level of dirt underneath there is what I would expect from Sunday to Thursday.

Although he's scouring for trouble spots,

he's aware the place can't be spotless all the time.

They've got a business to run.

We don't expect them to spend all their time on cleaning

cos they wouldn't be selling anything.

After looking at all the obvious places,

Richard take a gander at some hard to reach ones.

It's not just what you can see, it's what you can smell.

You start to get a slight stagnant water smell in these areas,

but this one's fine, no issues at all.

With Richard's visit at an end...

-Any other questions? OK with that?

-Yeah, I'm fine, thank you.

..It's a good result for the owner.

He's pleased to keep his four stars and that Richard is keeping him on his toes.

I'm happy. Finally he came and he's happy on many things.

Of course we've got a couple of mistakes

and we need to do that and sort that out.

They seem to be aware of all the important things.

They were aware of cleaning,

making sure that the place is clean and tidy.

It was a bit disappointing that they haven't really got any written practices and procedures

but generally as businesses go, that was quite decent.

Back in Oxford, it's another mixed bag.

These temperatures are really good. Excellent.

While everything in the kitchen is looking rosy...

Let's have a look.

The backyard has one or two thorns.

It's always a horrible area, this, isn't it?

OK.

This is for the oil.

HE SIGHS OK.

Right, what I'm concerned with here is rats coming.

Bins like that, that's a proper rat snack that.

-Have you had any problems?

-No.

I can't believe, with this much food, there's not rats. It's not great,

but the main thing is they're not inside.

It's often a grey area over who should clean up communal spaces.

The takeaway or the landlord. But someone has to do it.

It's just this area, I'd really like to see that cleaned up.

At the end of the day, it's your business, so...

So although the inside is good, the situation outside is letting this place down,

but can it redeem itself with how the food is stored?

-So this is just defrosting?

-Yeah.

-OK.

It's good you're doing it in the fridge.

So everything on this side is all ready to eat?

And your raw stuff you keep separate over here?

-Yes.

-That's very good.

With the inspection over, Richard can now deliver his verdict.

The scores on the doors, that gives you 25.

That gives you three stars again.

So overall, you're good.

The chances of you causing food poisoning are low, yeah?

But what I'm bothered about is that yard out the back

might attract rodents and if you've got rodents, that's a disaster.

But, you've come out as good, so you've kept your three stars so I'm pleased about that.

I always like it when people manage to maintain their stars.

It's a big thing, it's their business.

So putting people down is not something I relish.

It's good to see people are listening to you,

and that standards are being maintained.

For Branos, their hat-trick of three stars still stands.

But Richard's hoping by the next visit, they'll have cleaned up the backyard

and be well on their way to adding a fourth.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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