Swan at Fradley 1 star hygiene rating

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

Fridge temperatures taken (or set) by the fridge itself are not acceptable - it has to be a calibrated thermometer and taken at agreed times.

(At least it was when we had the restaurant).

 

The argument being that just because the temperature that you set on the Fridge (ie 5 degrees C) does not mean that the fridge is actually at 5 degrees C

 

It was similar for the medicine fridges on our wards.

 

The readings had to be recorded from a seperate thermometer.

[gatekrash]

Nobody seems to have asked (or answered) the really important question on this thread though.

 

Is their beer any good ?

[Guest]

Just now, gatekrash said:

Nobody seems to have asked (or answered) the really important question on this thread though.

 

Is their beer any good ?

 

Average last time we visited. But that was 5 or 6 years ago now.

 

It strikes me as being typical of a venue sited at an iconic location so doesnt have to make much of an effort.

 

Unlike the Greyhound at Hawkesbury.

[Mad Harold]

Once had a dose of Salmonella, contracted by eating fish and chips with my fingers after helping clean a friend's barn.Doc said it was Campanlabacta.

Thought I was going to die the pain was so bad.

At it's worst it wasn't worth while pulling my trousers up after sitting on the toilet because no sooner had I stood up, I had to go again!

When finally empty, the pain was excruciating!

Food poisoning is not to be taken lightly.

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

10 minutes ago, gatekrash said:

Nobody seems to have asked (or answered) the really important question on this thread though.

 

Is their beer any good ?

It’s Everard’s if I remember right. With a couple of guest stuff. 
Has always been well kept when I’ve been there. 
 

But as said above it lives off its

location, summertime anyway. 
A meeting place for bike clubs or a day out with the grandchildren type of place. 
 

[Rob-M]

3 minutes ago, Goliath said:

It’s Everard’s if I remember right. With a couple of guest stuff. 
Has always been well kept when I’ve been there. 
 

But as said above it lives off its

location, summertime anyway. 
A meeting place for bike clubs or a day out with the grandchildren type of place. 
 

We saw around 40 Harley's arrive on one of our visits last year.

[Mike Todd]

It is harder than one might think to fake record keeping of this sort. Especially if it is supposed to be someone different each time, or at least changing fairly often. Just 'ticking the boxes' with then same pen, for instance, would be a give away but in most systems a sig or initials are needed.

 

Any half decent kitchen inspector will have their little 'secret' tests that they use to asses a situation - one showed me how he covertly ran his finger on the underside of edge of prep surfaces. A place that looks good on top will be shown up if it is only skin deep (as it were) and will then attract more in depth attention elsewhere. 

 

As I indicated before, H&S is a culture and it is hard to fake reliably. You may 'get away' with it for a time but unlikely to succeed when it matters ie after a serious incident.

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

42 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

We saw around 40 Harley's arrive on one of our visits last year.

You know the same man is driving at least three bikes?

 

[Stroudwater1]

I wonder if any people will stop eating at The Swan as a result , round here  the local chippy with the lowest rating is almost always the busiest. 
 

Basic hygiene is very important but I’m not aware that the ratings have any reality to food poisoning rates nor to hygiene as we would think of it. 
 

it would be interesting to know how much the hygiene ratings cost the local economy. It’s like Offsted and CQC, pretty expensive for it’s usefulness.  No CQC in Wales, not aware that care is any worse for that, probably better as Heath workers aren’t obsessed with dotting i’s and crossing t’s  and so have more time  to actually care 🤣

[David Mack]

4 hours ago, tree monkey said:

We had a tech drawing teacher who threw a hammer at a pupil, in fact for as long as I was in his class the hole was in the door where it landed.

Same bloke used to throw chairs at pupils who wound him up as well, quite frankly the bloke was a nutter

Our chemistry teacher, Phil Smith once demonstrated that the reaction between hydrogen gas and chlorine gas is light sensitive. We all waited outside the chemistry building while he, in the lab with the blinds down, filled a balloon with a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine from gas cylinders. Then on the word of command from inside one of our number yanked the door open and Phil came running out holding the balloon aloft.

There was a big bang.

And presumably we were all showered with hydrochloric acid!

Edited April 5, 2022 by David Mack

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

41 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

It is harder than one might think to fake record keeping of this sort. Especially if it is supposed to be someone different each time, or at least changing fairly often. Just 'ticking the boxes' with then same pen, for instance, would be a give away but in most systems a sig or initials are needed.

 

Any half decent kitchen inspector will have their little 'secret' tests that they use to asses a situation - one showed me how he covertly ran his finger on the underside of edge of prep surfaces. A place that looks good on top will be shown up if it is only skin deep (as it were) and will then attract more in depth attention elsewhere. 

 

As I indicated before, H&S is a culture and it is hard to fake reliably. You may 'get away' with it for a time but unlikely to succeed when it matters ie after a serious incident.

I run my finger over me picture frames and reliably find a living culture. 
 

Weren’t Quinten Krisp famous for saying something about dust only getting so deep over so many years?

 

I find it’s generally the same with filth and grease. 
Gets to a certain point, why bother, ain’t gonna get any worse. 

[Stilllearning]

52 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

We saw around 40 Harley's arrive on one of our visits last year.

Bad luck.

[Stilllearning]

1 hour ago, Mad Harold said:

Once had a dose of Salmonella, contracted by eating fish and chips with my fingers after helping clean a friend's barn.Doc said it was Campanlabacta.

Thought I was going to die the pain was so bad.

At it's worst it wasn't worth while pulling my trousers up after sitting on the toilet because no sooner had I stood up, I had to go again!

When finally empty, the pain was excruciating!

Food poisoning is not to be taken lightly.

In the 70s a friend got food poisoning in Delhi and ended up sleeping in the bathroom.

Somehow when I lived in Dubaiin the 70s I never got any sort of intestinal problem, though most of my colleagues had bad experiences, known as Rashid’s Revenge.

[PaulD]

32 minutes ago, Stilllearning said:

In the 70s a friend got food poisoning in Delhi and ended up sleeping in the bathroom.

Somehow when I lived in Dubaiin the 70s I never got any sort of intestinal problem, though most of my colleagues had bad experiences, known as Rashid’s Revenge.

I used to love the street food when working in India and never had a problem. Local Indian staff wouldn’t join me because they would be off work for a couple days afterwards. 

[Ex Brummie]

2 hours ago, nicknorman said:

Sure, but I wouldn’t be difficult to have an independent tamper-proof automatic monitoring system that did the job of the calibrated thermometer but without the need for human intervention (except to get it calibrated eg annually).

Such equipment is available, but at a price which would be an unacceptable expense to smaller undertakings. In a previous existence I had a cafe and had a disagreement with the VAT inspector about having a cash register that itemised and segregated receipts. at the time such an item would have cost the same as 2 weeks turnover. Her argument was that it would  make her life so much easier than having to sit in a corner of the cafe re-analysing the menu notes that I had already done. the following inspections were much more perfunctory. Similarly the council health inspector decided we had insufficient ventilation in the kitchen. I asked him how many 'air changes' would be required to which he replied 'more than you have'. I offered to make provision for his evaluated recommendation and never heard anything more. At the time there were no rating stars but I doubt if I would have qualified for any.

[Hudds Lad]

1 hour ago, Mad Harold said:

Once had a dose of Salmonella, contracted by eating fish and chips with my fingers after helping clean a friend's barn.Doc said it was Campanlabacta.

Thought I was going to die the pain was so bad.

At it's worst it wasn't worth while pulling my trousers up after sitting on the toilet because no sooner had I stood up, I had to go again!

When finally empty, the pain was excruciating!

Food poisoning is not to be taken lightly.

Campylobacter? had that, thought i was going to die. Sat on the loo for about four days with a bucket in hand not knowing which end it was coming from next, sure i even passed out at one point as i suddenly had full body pins & needles. Only week i ever had off work sick. No idea how i caught it, but i never want to have it again, would rather have proper flu.

 

Have also had e.coli in me youth (thanks mum ) which was bad, but nothing on old campylobacter.

 

We used to get milk delivered, green top as was, raw unpasteurised, glorious on cereal and in a brew. Some folk from further south bought the house over the road and put an order in with the milkman, within a week they all had salmonella and blamed the milk. Often wondered if it was true and we had all built tolerance or if they were just looking for something to blame?

[BlueStringPudding]

I remember being told by a chef never to eat food from a place with a hygiene rating of less than three. He reckoned that any idiot could achieve a 3, as long as they didn't serve the food off the toilet the floor. 😉 

 

Here's the rating of The Swan:

 

https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/1281054/The-Swan-Inn-Burton-Upon-Trent

 

 

 

[MtB]

1 hour ago, Stilllearning said:

Bad luck.

 

I'd imagine the Swan wasn't too pleased either, given that bikers generally don't drink and drive these days. They probably sold a lot of coffees! 

[David Mack]

1 hour ago, Stilllearning said:

In the 70s a friend got food poisoning in Delhi and ended up sleeping in the bathroom.

My sister reckoned that all she saw of India was the inside of her hotel room after a dose of Delhi belly on the first day.

[Guest]

Worst D&V I ever got was after buying a ham and cheese baguette from a boulanger on a street corner in Paris.

 

The clue that all might not be as it should was the three cats walking all over the place, including the counter tops.

 

We were only in Paris for five days. I saw very little.

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by The Happy Nomad

[nicknorman]

2 hours ago, gatekrash said:

Nobody seems to have asked (or answered) the really important question on this thread though.

 

Is their beer any good ?

Unfortunately no. Not that it's badly kept, just that Everards is one of the worst IMO. But the staff are friendly, the location is great, so we often go there and suffer the beer!

I will admit to having had some bad experiences at Gt Haywood marina so they are not on my Christmas Card list, but it seems unfortunate that GH boat sales has taken over the building adjacent to the Swan (which was a little shop for a while) as their sales room. One of their first actions is to put up chain link fencing littered with NO PARKING signs. Just about as welcoming as the welcome we got when we tried to look at a boat for sale at GH marina, and a few years later when we tried to buy diesel there. I can't say if they have improved since then because we swore never to set foot or hull in there again. It does rather spoil the feel of the place

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

21 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I'd imagine the Swan wasn't too pleased either, given that bikers generally don't drink and drive these days. They probably sold a lot of coffees! 

Plenty of profit in coffee. 
And you don’t get the punch ups. 

[ditchcrawler]

4 minutes ago, Goliath said:

Plenty of profit in coffee. 
And you don’t get the punch ups. 

moor than beer when its a tied house

[Cheshire cat]

27th Feb there wasn't any food on offer and there wasn't on 27th 28th March either. The chalk boards were wiped clean.

 

The beer was variable. Tiger was OK but the guest had been on too long.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Cheshire cat
To correct the dates

[MtB]

I've been advised several times by a variety of people over the past decade or so not to order food in The Swan, due to hygiene issues.