SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Hyderabad: It’s been two months since the Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC) began posting about its food safety raids, and both restaurants and their customers seem to be on edge ever since.
As the public tries to depend less on outside food, restaurants are scrambling to win back trust with rapid improvements. Yet, when confronted over the violations uncovered during inspections, many establishments offered questionable explanations instead of accepting responsibility. From “bad luck” to the monsoon, they blamed everything but their own lapses.
“It was our bad luck that day… We clean everything regularly, but our senior staff was not present that day. We have been running this place for six years and something like this has never happened. We even showed the food safety officer videos from just one night before the raid, and they noted that everything was proper,” Sarvesh, a partner at Platform 65 at PNR Empire, Kukatpally, told Siasat.com.
With rats, clogged drains and stale food, the establishment ranked third from the bottom among all the places raided in June, and officials had recommended suspending its Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) license.
According to Sarvesh, the restaurant was closed for seven to eight days, during which it applied new paint, got different freezers for vegetarian and non-vegetarian items and trained staff to follow procedures. Grills were changed from the drains, and dustbins with lids were brought in.
Bahar Cafe in Madeenaguda ranked one place above Platform 65. The manager there insisted there was no problem with the food and said the place only made a bad impression because the kitchen was filled with smoke when the food safety officer came in.
“We use firewood to prepare our food and the smoke was not going out. The ceiling had turned black which is why the officer got a bad impression,” manager Pundari told Siasat.com. Though CMC’s X account said the place had been asked to shut kitchen operations, Pundari said they started operations the very next day, since they showed the officer the kitchen after the smoke had gone out.
“They gave us a list of 14 points to rectify, and we have complied with everything. We applied new paint and lights, fixed the flooring, replaced iron knives with stainless steel and got new chopping boards. We also removed the firewood stove,” he said.
Since one of the complaints was open washroom doors, the place has now installed an extra door. “The staff has to open two doors to access the washroom so that one remains closed even if another is left open,” he said.
Mall management, monsoon blamed
When Siasat.com asked about the cockroach infestation at the Barbeque Nation outlet in GSM Mall, Madinaguda, the branch manager said they have started carrying out pest control twice a week, up from once per week earlier.
“The cockroaches were only in the vegetable receiving area; all vegetables are sanitised before being used,” said branch manager Nityananda Kar, adding that the mall also had some responsibility to tackle such things. “If there is any problem in the building, it affects us as well,” he said.
Asif, the manager at Mandi King in Gachibowli, blamed bad timing. Officials had reportedly found oil that was in use for the past four days, a claim refuted by the manager, who said it was only used for one day. “The food safety officers had come shortly after we opened the restaurant. They saw the oil from the previous day, which we were going to dispose of anyway,” he told Siasat.com.
On the fly infestation, Asif said it can’t be helped due to monsoons. “Some flies will be there no matter how hard we try,” he defended.
However, not all restaurants were eager to share their improvements. While Baisakhi Family Dhaba in Kandlakoya, Medchal, outright denied that there was any inspection at their place, AnTera, a premium restaurant in Madeenaguda, said that the mouldy cauliflower and potato found in the kitchen were not meant for customers.
Operations Manager Ramu denied having the two vegetables on the menu, while another manager, Srinivas, said they were meant for the staff’s food.
In all, Siasat.com contacted 13 restaurants that were raided for food safety violations, of which seven responded. Royal Spicy Kitchen in Gachibowli, which ranked lowest on the hygiene rating, did not respond despite repeated calls.
Udupi Upahar at Moosapet, which was ordered to close because of an expired license on May 5, still shows “temporarily closed” on Google and calls to the restaurant have gone unanswered.
Calls to Shah Ghouse in Raidurg were also futile, and Mehfil in Hitech City was not keen to cooperate.
Can a food safety rating be our kind of Michelin star?
A CMC food safety official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak, told Siasat.com that their goal with posting about inspections online is not to scare people, but to let them know how good or bad the situation is at the places they are eating at.
“There is a thing called a Michelin star which is talked about a lot online. Us giving ratings to restaurants is an attempt at something similar,” he said.
He also insisted that the raids are not something that will die out in a month or two but will go on all year long. “We get yearly targets from the FSSAI and work is always going on in the background. Whether or not we choose to publicise it is a different matter,” he said.
When asked about outlets carrying out operations even after being served closure notices, the official said they have come across establishments that continue to operate illegally even after their license is cancelled. “To tackle this, we have started partnering with platforms like Swiggy and Zomato to make sure that the establishments with cancelled licenses are taken down from their apps as well,” the official told Siasat.com.
However, the official clarified that their objective is not to close businesses but to create awareness. “We regularly carry out training sessions with food business operators to make sure that they first know what the law is. Even the FSSAI Act requires us to give a notice and give them ample time for rectifications before it comes to anything drastic,” he said.
(This is part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 will be published on August 3, 2026, where Hyderabad’s diners weigh in on food safety violations at their favourite restaurants.)
SOURCE : SIASAT
