Student food exposed

The Tab has trawled through Leicester Council’s food hygiene ratings in an effort to expose exactly how clean your favourite restaurants are.

It’s fair to say that the hygiene of our favourite eateries is a mixed bag. Businesses are rated from 0-5 during regular council inspections, 0 translating as ‘urgent improvements necessary’, and 5 showing hygiene is ‘excellent’.

The University generally averages 3-4 ratings across all the restaurants and cafés on campus, which is considered a reasonably good hygiene level. The Students’ Union ranks particularly highly, with Nourish and Starbucks scoring the highest rating possible. 1923 is also ranked highly.

Elsewhere on campus, Chi, Delicious and Planets Café are considered to be ‘generally satisfactory’ with ratings of 3.

For most Leicester students, London Road is a handy pitstop during a night out, on the way back to the Union from town. Popular In-N-Out Chicken was rated 1 at it’s last inspection, with the hygiene considered so poor that ‘major improvement’ was required.

Fried chicken places seemed to rank very low in the hygiene leagues, with Chicken Cottage on Granby Street and Mack Chicken on Welford Road both scoring low ratings of 2. That said, Maryland Chicken, Benny’s and Delight Express were rated as ‘generally satisfactory’ so it wasn’t all bad news for takeaway lovers.

Chinese restaurants popular with students seemed to perform the worst out of all of the student food The Tab investigated.

The amusingly named Big Wang’s hygiene rating wasn’t quite so funny – in January 2013 the restaurant was handed the lowest rating of zero, and ‘urgent improvement’ was requested to improve the situation. Bella’s on London Road also scored terribly, again being ranked zero during their most recent inspection.

One Chinese takeaway emerged with a less shocking rating – Ruby’s on Welford Road was handed a 3 rating.

Leicester’s renowned curry houses are popular places to grab a bite to eat, especially along London Road. Three curry houses close to the uni were poorly rated: Delicious Corner near Victoria Park scored just 1. Agra and The Curry House didn’t fare much better, both rated 2.

The Loaded Dog and the Marquis, both on London Road, scored poorly in their hygiene inspections. The popular Dog scored 2, and the Marquis was ranked with a lowly score of 1.

Elsewhere, the Turkey Café was handed a 2 rating, although Walkabout, the Last Plantagenet and the Dry Dock all scored highly.

If this has made depressing reading, it’s not all doom and gloom! There are a few gems among the germs, with all of Leicester’s Subway and Dominos ranking very highly. And if all else fails, there’s always Nandos!

So there we have it, a guide to some of the best and worst hygiene of your favourite places. Find out for yourself how clean your local takeaway is!

(All ratings listed are from the most recent inspections for each business mentioned)