Kitchen licence of Murugan Idli Shop in Chennai suspended over poor hygiene

The kitchen of Murugan Idli Shop, whose license has been temporarily suspended, supplies food to over 20 outlets of the restaurant across Chennai.

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The Food Safety Department of Tamil Nadu has suspended the license of the central kitchen of Chennai’s popular restaurant chain Murugan Idli Shop for having an unhygienic kitchen.

According to reports, the officials of Tiruvallur district suspended the license on Tuesday after the restaurant failed to rectify the issues pointed out to it by the food safety department in an earlier inspection. This kitchen, located inside Ambattur Industrial Estate, supplies food to around 23 branches in Chennai city.

The officials from the department had reportedly visited the kitchen 50 days ago after a slew of complaints regarding worms in the food served in the restaurants belonging to the food chain. During the inspection, the officials had noted down some main defects in the hygiene standards, like kitchen flooring damages and washing area, the temperature in the refrigerator not being maintained properly, failure to vaccinate and provide clean caps and gloves to its staff, lack of pest control inside the kitchen etc.

The officials had informed the restaurant and had given them time to rectify. Since the issues were not addressed, the department also reportedly issued a show cause notice to the restaurant after the time limit to address the issues expired. However, the restaurant neglected these notices and continued its operations in the same unhygienic conditions. This prompted the department to visit the premises on Tuesday and paste an announcement on the door, informing about the suspension of their license.

The restaurant can rectify the violations and approach the food safety department for revoking the suspension.

Meanwhile, the food safety department officials in Chennai district have issued a notice to an outlet of the restaurant chain Parrys after a customer complained about a worm in his food last week. The customer had alerted the manager of the outlet after he found the worm, however, the manager reportedly gave unsatisfactory reply to the customer. He hence filed a complaint with the officials of the food safety department through their WhatsApp complaint number.