Food hygiene, written from one restaurant's own procedures.

Before you even pick up a piece of food, you need to be fit to handle it.

If you have had vomiting or diarrhoea, you must stay away from food handling for 48 hours after your last symptom — not from when you started to feel better, but from the very last episode. Tell the head chef or duty manager before your shift, not when you arrive at the kitchen. If someone in your household has had the same illness, let us know too.

A sore throat with a fever, a skin infection, or an infected cut on your hands also means speaking to the head chef before your shift. Cuts and burns are covered with a blue waterproof plaster and a glove — the first aid box has both.

Personal hygiene on shift:

• Wash hands with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds: on arrival, after the toilet, after touching raw meat, fish or eggs, after handling bins or waste, after touching your face or phone, and before handling ready-to-eat food.
• Use the sink by the pass — that sink is for hands only, not for prep.
• Clean whites or aprons every shift, hair tied back, no watches or rings with stones, no jewellery that could fall into food.

Cross-contamination — moving harmful bacteria from raw food onto food that won't be cooked again — is one of the most common causes of food poisoning in restaurants. Our kitchen controls it through separation, colour-coded equipment and careful storage.

Colour-coded boards and knives:

• Red — raw meat
• Blue — raw fish
• Brown — vegetables
• Green — salad and fruit
• White — dairy and bakery
• Yellow — cooked meat

Always use the right board and knife for the job. Wipe down and sanitise worktops and boards between tasks, and always after raw meat, fish or eggs.

Fridge storage order (top to bottom):

1. Ready-to-eat food — top shelves
2. Raw fish
3. Raw meat and poultry
4. Raw poultry — always at the very bottom

This matters because drips from raw poultry falling onto ready-to-eat food — such as the smoked mackerel pâté or the leek and Cheddar tart waiting for service — can cause serious illness. Keeping raw poultry at the bottom eliminates that risk.

Do not wash raw chicken. Splashing spreads bacteria across the sink and surrounding surfaces. Cooking to the right temperature is what makes it safe.

Temperature is the single most important tool for slowing bacterial growth. Here is what our procedure requires.

Fridge target: 5°C or below. The legal maximum is 8°C — we use 5°C as our limit so we always have a margin. Freezer target: -18°C or below.

Checking temperatures: The fridge and freezer log is filled in at opening and again at 15:00, using the probe in the water-filled test pot. Sign it. If a fridge reads above 8°C:

1. Re-probe after 30 minutes — it may just have been a delivery being put away.
2. If still above 8°C, move the food to a working fridge and tell the head chef.
3. Log the reading, the time and what you did.
4. Food that has been above 8°C for more than 4 hours is thrown away. If you are unsure how long it has been above temperature, bin it.
5. Put an out-of-order sign on the fridge; the duty manager calls the engineer.

Probe calibration: Probes are checked every Monday in iced water, which should read 0°C (±1°C). Wipe probes with an alcohol wipe between every use.

Deliveries: Check chilled deliveries on arrival — they should be below 5°C (up to 8°C is the legal limit). Frozen deliveries must be hard, with no visible thaw. Check dates and packaging. Refuse anything unacceptable and note the driver's name on the delivery sheet.

Heat kills the bacteria that make people ill — but only if you hit the right temperature in the right part of the food.

Cooking: Cook food until the thickest part reaches 75°C. Poultry, minced meat, burgers (including our dry-aged burger), sausages and rolled joints are always probed and logged. Probe the thickest part and hold for the reading to settle.

Hot holding: Hot food held for service must be kept at 63°C or above. Probe at the start of service and every 2 hours, and log it. Anything under 63°C that has been out for more than 2 hours is discarded — do not try to reheat it to bring it back into service at that point.

Cooling: Cool food fast — from above 63°C to below 8°C within 90 minutes. Use shallow trays or the blast chiller. Never put a deep pan of hot stock straight into the fridge. Once cooled, label with the product name, date made and use-by date. Our use-by rule is 3 days, counting the day it was made as day one.

Reheating: Reheat once only, to a core of 75°C. If it does not reach temperature after one cycle, bin it. Never reheat the same food twice.

Labels and dates matter. Everything prepared in-house must be labelled. If something has no label or is past its use-by date, bin it — do not taste-test or guess.

An EHO visiting from your local authority will ask to see evidence that the controls described above are actually being followed every day. The records are what provide that evidence — and they give us the 'due-diligence defence' if a complaint is ever made.

Where the records live: The SFBB folder on the shelf above the pass. It holds:

• Fridge and freezer log
• Cooking and hot holding log
• Probe calibration sheet
• Cleaning sign-off sheets
• Delivery checks
• Supplier list

Who fills them in: The duty manager checks each evening that the day's records are complete and signed. If you fill in a log, sign it with your name and the time — not just a tick.

When something goes wrong: Tell the head chef or duty manager straight away. If a food safety failure may have reached a guest — undercooked chicken, a foreign body, an allergen served in error — the duty manager records what happened, keeps the item if any is left, and decides whether the guest needs to be contacted. The head chef writes up the cause and the fix in the incident record within 24 hours.

Good records are not bureaucracy — they are the proof that the team is doing everything right.