💬 Got food poisoning at a family restaurant near Masab Tank, now I check the kitchen first

Last month we took my mother out for her birthday dinner at a busy family restaurant near Masab Tank. Nice place, AC, full on a Sunday night. We had biryani, chicken 65 and a raita that tasted a bit off. Nobody said anything about the raita. You don't want to spoil the mood on your mother's birthday. By 2 am my wife and I were both up, taking turns in the bathroom. My mother was fine, thank God. 2 days off work. When I felt human again I went back to complain, mostly out of anger. The manager was polite and useless. Said 500 people eat here daily, nobody else has complained. On my way out I saw the side door to the kitchen was open. The oil in the frying pan was nearly black. Raw chicken sitting in a tray right next to the plates of cut onion going out to tables. So I went home and read up. FSSAI has a hygiene rating for restaurants, 1 to 5, shown as smiley faces. But it's voluntary. The restaurant has to ask for the audit, so the bad ones just don't bother. This place had no sticker at all. I'd never once looked for one before, in 20 years of eating out. You can also complain on the FSSAI Food Safety Connect app. I did, with photos. No reply after 3 weeks. Now I'm that annoying guy who peeks at the kitchen before ordering. My wife finds it embarrassing. Dark oil, I leave. Raw meat near cooked food, I leave. Staff with no caps, I think about it. We've lost 2 favourite places this way. Found 1 small one in Lakdikapul where the kitchen is open and spotless. Still angry about that raita, if I'm being straight. Mother's birthday, of all days.

I would not lean too much on hygiene rating stickers, since the scheme in the post is voluntary. A cafe near Hitech City had a five star sticker on the door but flies around the counter. The audit might have been a year old, I could not tell, because no date was printed anywhere. Has anyone found a place where the rating matched what you saw in the kitchen?

Reused cooking oil got me once too. I ate samosas near Secunderabad station last winter. The oil in the pan was almost black and I ignored it because the stall was crowded. By night I had a stomach ache that lasted two days, and I stayed home from work. A crowd does not mean clean, at least for me. Dark oil is my cue to walk away now.