Imperfect Chicken?

Just like everyone else, I love my local chicken shop. We’ve all got our favorite one and if we’re lucky we live within a five minute walk of it. We call all of the workers “boss”, tell all of our friends “it’s the best!” and in times of serious need live for the £1 deal advertised in the window .

The love we have for our local chicken shop is unwavering and can make us more forgiving than we would be in other fast food stops. When they say, “The food may take longer,”  it’s always, “Ah, it’s alright boss!” Grotty interiors? Where? Missing tiles? Not a problem. But however forgiving you are of your local chicken shop’s decor, there’s one thing that might  might make you desert them, and that’s a low hygiene rating.

Now, I’m no Chicken Connoisseur – that job’s already taken – and neither have I made my way to every chicken shop in East London. But what I have done for you is to visit the Food Standard Agency website – ratings.food.gov.uk – to check them out there instead. The rating system goes from ‘5’ (very good) down to zero, so what I’ve done for all you finger lickin’ enthusiasts is to compile an easy-to-digest list of all the chicken shops in East London that score only 0,1,or 2.

Each restaurant’s hygiene rating is based on how well they perform in the following categories:

• How hygienically the food is handled: i.e. how it is prepared, cooked, re-heated, cooled and stored.
• The condition of the structure of the buildings: the cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation and other facilities.
• How the business manages and records what it does to make sure food is safe.

The results are in and they are pretty damning. Of the 146 takeaways in London with a 0,1 or 2 rating, 32 of them were found in East London.

DISCLAIMER: if you are a fan of either Dixy or Perfect Fried Chicken (PFC) just look away now.

First of all, we have the restaurants that couldn’t even make it out of the block when it came to inspection time and currently sit on a FHR of 0.

Next, we have the ‘ones’. The only thing you can say about ‘one’ is that it is definitely better than zero.

Finally, in the words of the Three Dog Night hit written by fHarry Nilsson: ‘Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one.’

Now, this is simply a reference point for all chicken shop lovers. I’m not trying to ‘diss’ the shops in this list, I’m just proving that not everyone’s local is the best in line with the Food Standards Agency. On the contrary, I am eternally grateful for the tasty chicken these fast food havens provide, not to mention the cheap prices. But hopefully this Rising East survey will help you distinguish between the good, the bad, and the darn right ugly!

Picture: Wikipedia Commons