Although many of us love the idea of dabao-ing food from outside, especially now that many F&B outlets exclusively do takeaways, we only give a little thought to hygiene.
With these outlets usually located in malls, their squeaky clean exteriors make it easy to be deceived.
But when you don’t know what’s happening inside and discover that your food may be infested with roaches, your stomach will start churning.
This happened to one woman when she walked past a Wok Hey stall and discovered cockroaches on their cleaning brushes.
Video Uploaded to Stomp
An anonymous Stomper stumbled upon several filthy cleaning brushes when she walked past the Wok Hey outlet at Compass One at around 7:15 am on Monday (17 April).
Upon closer inspection, she realised one of the brushes had cockroaches.
The video she captured showed several cockroaches crawling at the top of one of dirty-looking brushes.
She told Stomp that these brushes were used to clean the woks used to cook the fried rice.
Disgusted by the sight, she said it made her “hairs stand on end.” She added that she would no longer be eating from Wok Hey, and so will her children, who used to love it.
She has since reported the incident to Singapore Food Agency (SFA).
SFA and Wok Hey’s Response
In response to the Straits Times, SFA said that food safety is in the hands of both SFA and food vendors.
SFA will devise and implement regulations to maintain food safety, while food vendors must comply with these regulations.
They highlighted that they had an online feedback form where members of the public could report any cases that they deemed clashed with hygiene regulations.
They added that with enough proof, they would swiftly take action against any food vendors who have gone against regulatory practices.
On Thursday (20 April), a Wok Hey spokesman told Straits Times that the stall was not open yet when the video was taken, and the cockroaches might have entered the stall due to its open premises.
They will now collaborate with their cleaning contractors to find ways to improve the hygiene standards of their stalls.
They assured us their staff would clean the brushes before using them daily.
However, the Stomper was not satisfied with their response, saying that the cooks must be responsible and wash the brushes after using them.
She questioned how often they replaced the brushes and how the staff handled other ingredients. She noted that the stall continued its operations when she visited again on Thursday (20 April) afternoon.
At least in Wok Hey’s case, roaches weren’t found in their food. That would’ve been extra gross and stomach-churning.
Some customers of other F&B establishments, however, weren’t so lucky. You will realise after reading this that the possibilities of finding all kinds of stuff in your food are endless.
One would definitely not expect to find a cigarette butt in their Mala Xiang Guo dish.
Last year on 27 December, a netizen named PeiYi Neo uploaded a photo on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook group of her Mala dish where a cigarette butt was spotted.
She bought the dish from a Chinatown stall called Ri Ri Hong Xiang Guo.
What’s worse is that the staff denied it was a cigarette butt and gaslighted her, saying it was a dried red chilli.
In more extreme cases, customers may fall sick due to the lack of hygiene practices put in place by some restaurants.
You don’t often see establishments with a hygiene grade lower than “B”, but you may have heard recently that the Spize outlet at Simpang Bedok had its hygiene grade downgraded to “C”.
From 5 July to 6 July last year, 15 people were reported to have food poisoning after visiting the outlet.
It was found that the kitchens had failed to adhere to hygiene rules, such as properly segregating ready-to-eat and raw food.
Spize has a history of customers falling ill to food poisoning, with more severe incidents occurring a few years back.
63 people fell ill after consuming Spize-catered food at a company event, with 45 hospitalised.
One of them developed acute gastroenteritis and passed away eight days later.
In light of these cases, we should be warier of the food we consume outside.