Staff at a well-known Nottingham burger restaurant say improvements have been made since a hygiene inspection highlighted several concerns and gave it a rating of two out of five.
Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), in Trinity Square, was given the grading by Nottingham City Council which conducts yearly, random hygiene checks at restaurants, bars, cafes and shops.
Inspectors gave the outlet, one of a national chain of 88 restaurants, a rating out of five – zero being the worst and five the best.
The rating was issued on June 2 last year and managers say they are awaiting a new visit, saying the restaurant is “much better now”.
Last year inspectors found there was ‘confusion’ from staff “surrounding pictures showing how medium-rare burgers should look after cooking”.
Inspectors also wrote “the wash hand basin in the back prep area had evidently not been used as it was dry” at the time of the visit and said “it is essential that food handlers are regularly washing [their] hands”.
And the report showed staff washed glasses and plates in a sink labelled “hand wash only”.
Gosia Dziadek, assistant manager of the branch, said the staff have “worked on everything the inspectors didn’t like to make a change”.
She said the sink used for washing glasses, labelled “hand wash only”, had the “wrong labelling”.
She said: “To be honest we are now awaiting the new visit, it [the restaurant’s hygiene] is much better now. They are random visits; we are awaiting it.
“Everything the inspector wrote in the report we’ve been working with our outside checking company [to improve].”
She added the restaurant received a four-star rating in 2015 and staff were surprised by the results of the 2016 inspection.
The report, provided to Notts TV after a Freedom of Information Act request, also highlighted “personal items” such as mobile phones and hand cream were stored next to clean cooking equipment.
And raw tomatoes were “stored in close proximity” to eggs, meat and sauces in the restaurant’s walk-in fridge – posing the risk of contamination.
The report highlighted the “standards of cleaning at wall and floor junctions and around equipment legs” – such as chairs – needed “significant improvement”.
And inspectors called for a “deep clean throughout all food areas” to be maintained in a “clean condition”.
They also said there was a need for the “improvement to the organisation of work flow and procedural controls in the kitchen prep area”.
Tim Molema, head of food at GBK, said: “At GBK food safety and restaurant standards are of paramount importance.
“All our restaurants are subject to rigorous quarterly, unannounced external inspections as part of a routine auditing programme, as well as internal audits from senior management.
“This allows us to continually monitor standards across the board. Since Nottingham’s visit in June 2016 all issues have been addressed and a revisit requested.”
