A restaurant which won £300,000 worth of investment on the BBC programme ‘My Million Pound Menu’ has a serious mouse and cockroach infestation, masticater.org can reveal.

The restaurant called Baba G’s, which was founded in Brixton and merges burgers with Indian cuisine, currently has a ‘0’ health rating and was advised in September last year to make “urgent improvement” to its hygiene and safety standards.

In a damming report by the Food Safety Agency, an inspector warned the kitchen at Baba G’s was presenting “an imminent risk to public health” and stated major steps needed to be taken to “avoid formal action” by the agency.

In what must have been a frightful moment, a health inspector wrote during their visit “whilst writing this report a live German cockroach was seen crawling on the folder on the food preparation surface.”

Despite all this, the ‘pop-up’ restaurant run by Alec Owen and Liz Selway gained £300,000 of investment from Michelin star chef and entrepreneur Atul Kochhar – this was after they turned down £200,000 from serial restauranteur Jamie Barber.

Mr Kochhar said in his pitch to be chosen for investment by Baba G’s that he wanted to use the money to launch potentially two restaurants. Currently, Kochhar owns Benares, a Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in Mayfair

My Million Pound Menu is currently in its second series and airing on BBC 2 at 8pm on Tuesday. The program is hosted by celebrity Maître d’ Fred Sirieix, most popular for his appearance in First Dates.

In each episode, Sirieix introduces different sets of restaurant owners, each with new ideas for dining concepts, to pitch for investment from one of 10 potential investors. Like Dragon’s Den for the restaurant industry.

When asked if he’d vetted the restaurant before investing, chef Atul Kochhar said: “During filming the investors make their initial decisions based on the food produced and proposal presented on the day. Afterwards, there follows the complex and thorough due diligence process. For Baba G this is still ongoing and therefore I am unable to comment on their current business status.”

This seems to suggest that the restaurant’s FSA record was not looked at and may be the subject of discussion.

When the report of Baba G’s was completed in September 2018, the inspector advised the “cockroach and mice infestation” be tackled immediately as well as a thorough clean to remove “droppings, grease, dirt and general rubbish.”

In one example of the risk to health, the FSA wrote mouse droppings were found on the lid of a container holding bread rolls, presumably for Baba G’s Bhangra Burger.

A competitor that lost out to Baba G on the BBC show, Krapow LDN, currently has ‘5’ rating by the FSA meaning “very good.”

Baba G’s did not respond to a request for comment.

You can watch the episode where Baba G’s wins on iPlayer. Read the baba g – fsa report

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