In the Name of Hygiene & Beyond: Food-work & Food-space in Restaurants.
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| Author | Chennangodu, Rajeshwari |
In India, "no admission" boards are quite common at the doors of the restaurant-kitchens. They have been keeping both the kitchen space and kitchen workers out-of-sight from the consumers who eat the food cooked in these kitchens. In November 2019, Gujarat state government has directed hotels, restaurants and canteens in the state to have open kitchens to enable those who eat the food made in these kitchens to see how they are made ("Food Safety Check", 2019). Thus, according to the notification issued under Food Safety Standard Act (FSSAI) 2006, there should be either transparent walls through which the eaters can see the kitchen or the "no admission without permission" signs be removed so that consumers are no more stopped from seeing the kitchen ("Explained: Why Gujarat is letting customers walk into restaurant kitchens", 2019). Government officials have claimed that it is a method to ensure food safety by bringing transparency in food processing in these hotels, as the number of food security officers in Gujarat is insufficient to check and ensure hygiene and safety ("Explained: Why Gujarat is letting customers walk into restaurant kitchens", 2019). As per the above-cited news reports, associations of hotel owners have welcomed this order. We explore this development from the perspective of foodwork --the work related to cooking and serving food- and in the spaces like restaurants and canteens, where food is cooked, served and consumed.
We argue that the new order to open the kitchens for the visibility of the consumers has at least two implications: first, it opens up a discourse about having a closed kitchen, which has the potential to shed light upon the work and employment in the restaurant industry. On the other hand, it can also bring the workers and their workspaces under the gaze of consumers, making their already precarious jobs even more precarious as now they will come under the surveillance of the consumers round the clock, if the order is followed. We also discuss the recent practice of 'cloud kitchens', where consumers and kitchen remain apart. In such restaurants, the kitchen and the work in the kitchen can still remain hidden from the consumers and even the stated goal of the order of maintaining hygiene through consumer gaze is difficult to be met.
Visibilization & Invisibilization
Indian eateries are made of two kinds of spaces: the dining space that is created for the customers to eat food, and the kitchen space which...
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