Five-star rating is for marble and amenities; the food is no safer than a thela's
It is 9 at night. On one side of the road, a man tips a ladle of oil onto a screaming hot tawa, and your
It is 9 at night. On one side of the road, a man tips a ladle of oil onto a screaming hot tawa, and your kathi roll hisses into life in front of your eyes. On the other side, 16 floors up, a chandelier throws soft light over a chilled buffet, and a waiter in a waistcoat lifts a silver cloche. Read Full Story You have been taught which of these two to fear. I am a BTech in food technology, and I am going to tell you that you have been taught wrong. Not wrong to worry about the cart. Wrong to assume the five-star hotel is safe. This week gave us the proof. In Bengaluru, the Food Safety and Drugs Administration Department sealed the kitchen of Skyye Lounge, the rooftop lounge on the 16th floor of the luxury UB City mall, after finding it in an unhygienic state, with rotten chicken and beef, and milk and curd expired by around 10 days. The same ongoing drive also uncovered dirty, expired or substandard food at multiple five-star and luxury hotels in the city, including The Lalit Ashok Annex South, Shangri-La Bengaluru, Four Seasons Hotel Bengaluru, Vivanta Bengaluru Whitefield, Taj Yeshwantpur and Radisson Blu The Atria, where large quantities of expired meat, fish, vegetables, milk and bakery items were seized and destroyed. Across the wider drive, 30 teams swept 60 hotels over three days and seized 640 kg of meat, chicken and fish, 276 kg of rotten or mould-hit vegetables, 45 litres of expired milk and curd and 49 litres of used cooking oil. And in a detail almost nobody noticed, they did not stop at the kitchens. They went upstream, to the cold storage and distribution centres that supply perishables to many of the city's reputed hotels, and seized stock there too. That last line is the whole story. Because it means the rot did not begin in the restaurant. It arrived there. WHAT A STAR ACTUALLY MEASURES Start with a question almost no diner asks. Who gives a hotel its stars, and for what? In India, a hotel's stars are awarded by the Hotel and Restaurant Approval and Classification Committee, a body under the Ministry of Tourism, and applying for them is voluntary. A committee grades it against a long checklist of facilities and services: room sizes, furnishings, the number of restaurants and bars, recreation, lifts, and guest services. The Ministry of Tourism's own guidelines show how much of that score is about comfort and grandeur. The rating, once granted, then stands for years before it is renewed. A star, in short, is a certificate of luxury. It measures the lobby, the linen and the lighting. It does not certify that your dinner is safe. That falls to a different authority under a different law, the Food Safety and Standards Act, enforced by the very officers who walked into those Bengaluru kitchens. Two certificates, two bodies, two different things. One rewards the marble; the other, when someone is watching, guards the meat. A hotel can hold the first while failing the second, exactly as Bengaluru showed. And here is the part the tariff hides.
The BriefWire