An unsavoury online guide to restaurant kitchens

What really goes on in the kitchens of restaurants has long been a matter of conjecture to the customers waiting for their food. Now diners in one provincial city can check the cleanliness and safety of their local restaurants before they book a table.

In what is believed to be the first scheme of its kind in Britain, Norwich city council is publishing reports from its environmental health inspections on its website. The council has given a one to five star rating for all of the city's 217 food outlets.

With the click of a mouse, residents can read the inspectors' report sent to the proprietors of everything from high street bakers to the best restaurants. So they can discover whether the local Chinese takeaway has dirty walls, whether the late-night kebab house is sufficiently heating its meat to prevent bacteria and whether the fish restaurant has a cockroach infestation.

The reports make for squeamish reading for people in Norfolk, and elsewhere. Norwich, the home city of Delia Smith, is not believed to have particularly dirty restaurants yet 38 of its 217 outlets are officially rated zero for food safety.

Such establishments have failed to satisfy the law on hygiene, cleanliness or confidence in management, and environmental health officers may take action.

Many times, inspectors found kitchens were not properly storing raw meat, failed to refrigerate food and failed to check the temperature of cooked meat.

There was a widespread problem with kitchens being unclean. Two inspections at the Fountain Chinese restaurant in Earlham Road last month found grave lapses. The report said: "The kitchen was very dirty in places." It warned: "Standards of food hygiene are generally low and/or a serious problem has risked food safety." At Moonlight Café, an inspector noticed a "lack of handwashing". He told the proprietor: "At no point during my inspection did you wash your hands, even after food preparation/cooking operation or when returning to the premises after having purchased bread."

At the Coachmakers Arms in St Stephens Road, walls and floors had brown streaks, there was mould between tiles, debris was found behind freezers and there were cobwebs.

Publication of the reports has caused a stir in Norwich. One resident said: "People go to the website to see if new places have been added. It's getting to the stage where you are saying, 'We're going to that restaurant' and someone will say, 'Do you know that it has no stars'." Publishing the reports is intended to raise standards of hygiene, said Jaan Stanton, the council's food safety officer. "I have had people ringing me to say what a great idea it is," he said. "They all say how nice it is to be aware of what the premises are like inside and how, if they had realised a place was so bad they would never have gone there." Which?, formerly the Consumers Association, wants a national database so people can check the hygiene of every restaurant. "It's really good that Norwich is doing this," said Sue Davis, head of food campaigns. "You should be able to make a decision about where you want to eat based on the standards of hygiene. Where this happens abroad, such as in Denmark and New York, they have found it does drive up standards and everybody wins."

But Richard Harden, a restaurant critic and author of the Harden's guides, feared people may be turned off good restaurants by environmental health criticism. He said: "You have to have faith in the health services to prosecute if there is anything terribly wrong, and for most of the people most of the time things are fine."

The unpleasant truths

* Linzers Bakery Inspected: 15 November

"Extensive" areas need cleaning. Bakery tins covered with ingrained grease, food, debris and dust. WC in such poor state it's not cleanable.

* Moonlight Café Bar, Inspected: 10 November

Food hygiene low. Dirty shelving, microwaves, fridges. No hand-washing.

* Fountain Restaurant Inspected: 4 and 9 November

Kitchen filthy. Fridge handles, light switches and door handles particularly dirty. Seemingly no sanitiser or disinfectant on premises.