Developing a decent culture of eating out

A drive launched on Sunday last against restaurants and eateries preparing and serving food in unhygienic conditions in the capital has not drawn much attention. But this is perhaps for the first time that a coordinated and concerted move has come about against as important an issue as gastronomic health and eating culture. The health divisions of both Dhaka South and North City Corporations joined hands with the Bangladesh Food Security Authority in order to bring about some sort of discipline in the anarchy marking the restaurant and other food outlet business.
According to the Bangladesh Restaurants Owners' Association (BROA), about 2,000 of the approximately 5,000 restaurants in the capital operate without trade licence. There is no guarantee, though, that trade licence makes it incumbent on a food outlet to strictly follow the health and hygiene rules in its business. Ethical standard, more often than not, is compromised in business here -only more so by hotel and restaurant management.
The myth that highly reputed restaurants or bakeries dispose of their unsold items to avoid selling stale products was busted when one of the leading bakeries in the capital was fined by a mobile court for mixing such unsold items with fresh dough. Even its factory at Tongi was found unhygienic for preparation of foods they are famous for. In fact, the sense of health and hygiene is quite low here. Even the concept of what is known as a well-dressed chef is a borrowed one. Cooks often chewing betel leaf and nut reigning supreme in the kitchen of a restaurant and cooking and serving foods with a number of ill-clad and unkempt helpers or bearers present a traditional picture. Their sense of personal health and hygiene leaves much to be desired.   
Since eating out by an increasing number of Dhaka's residents has become the order of the day, restaurants, hotels or eateries like dhaba are also coming up fast. Their ubiquitous explosion in suburbs, innocuous localities and posh areas is noticeable now. More Dhakaites than ever before have become affluent and their money in pocket goads them to imitate the more privileged and elite classes of high society. But they cannot often visit the fancy restaurants in Gulshan and Banani. But their gourmet appetite must be satisfied by either fast food outlets or restaurants not as sophisticated and trim as their counterparts in the posh areas.
As for the working class, there is no such problem. They simply need to fill up their stomach and thus a type of open eateries comes up on the roadside where cheap foods are served. So far as the items are concerned, nothing wrong with them but it is the arrangement, preparation and cleaning process that are at fault. Dust and flies are the two enemies of good foods and on that count such eateries are a depot of all that can discredit those foods.
Clearly, money decides the quality of foods. But not always. When restaurants or hotels maintain link with traders of fowls for supplying dead chicken which they cook and serve, the practice is not only nauseating but violates all kinds of business ethics. There are many such practices that the average eateries can do away with. For example using the same cooking oil for days is very unhygienic but most restaurants and hotels would not throw the used oil away. Then the use of colours not recommended for foods is a common practice. How devastating an effect of such chemical colours can be when taken with food needs hardly any elaboration. Also containers or polythene or plastic package must comply with certain set rules. But food grade polythene and plastic are hardly used by the majority of ready-to-eat food producers.       
These are areas that are neglected most when the basic health rules in the practice of food preparation and packaging or serving along with cleanliness become a casualty. The need is to raise the quality of life of those who are in charge of the kitchen. At the same time, catering service should be updated. Those who will be employed for such jobs must go through extensive training in order to learn the art of cuisine preparation, their arrangement and serving.
In fact, the hotel and restaurant industry has come a long way off from what it was in the 18th and 19th century. In the new millennium, Bangladesh also must know how to develop a restaurant culture in the way Paris, New York, Rome and London have done. To the credit of Bangladeshi chefs, Londoners have known the taste of spicy foods of the East. Now they eat out at least four times a week. The New Yorkers lead the pack.
How the Dhakaites eat out needs to be figured out. The fact that foods from different countries are now available in Dhaka only confirms that they are also following the trend. The busier urbanites become the greater the need for eating out. But when this essential job has to be accomplished, the feeling ought to be that the diners are taking meals in just another room of their house not far away. There indeed lies the secret of the gastronomic satisfaction.
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