Orange Juice in restaurants in the UK
 

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of breakfast restaurants in Europe and the U.K. seem to serve canned juice (I've tried to avoid Hi-C since I was a kid and that's what it reminds me of).

So, I was thrilled last week when I went into a restaurant in London and noticed that they had fresh squeezed juice. I was sitting across from this machine into which oranges are dropped, one at a time, into a clear tank (for lack of a better word) so one can observe the process. The orange is sliced in two and then each half is squeezed into the area below and the rest of the orange is discarded into some unseen bin. There were several boxes of oranges stacked up from Brazil and South Africa, according to the printing on the boxes. Periodically, one of the employees would place several oranges onto the top of this contraption to keep the process moving. I began to wonder if this was sanitary - the whole juicing process is in the same clear tank as where the juice is held. I suppose the oranges could have been washed before they were boxed, however, at one point the guy feeding the machine dropped an orange on the floor and put it right back onto the machine to be dropped in with the fresh juice. That, I know, was not sanitary.

Now, are Americans just crazy with their food sanitation or would there be some public health violations in London that were probably not being followed? If I would have been in the U.S., I would have reported what I saw to the manager, but I just watched and ordered a can of Diet Coke to drink with my omelet. :)

If I'd ordered an OJ in that place I'd have gone loopy at such behaviour. The staff member should have been reprimanded for that at least.

Not normal in a UK restaurant.

The oranges are not generally washed as far as I know. Or, put it this way, when the people who own / sell the machines (Zumex? I may be imagining the name however) provide training for restaurant staff on use, they do not tell you to wash the oranges first. Given the semi-open boxes of oranges sit on the floor of the wholesalers, on the floor on the lorry transporting them to the restaurant, close to the floor in the restaurant walk in fridge, being dropped on the restaurant floor, which is likely mopped at least a couple of times a day would be the least of my worries.

Those same conditions exist in the US and Canada too - and I don't routinely come across restaurants (or home cooks) who thoroughly wash the outside of an orange before juicing it - a quick rinse won't get rid of anything of consequence (it doesn't matter waht the machine is or does - the simplest version being a knife - if it touches the outside of the fruit and then the inside, the contamination risk is there.)

Oh, and knowing all this, I still have zero problem drinking the juice from these machines, and use to on a regular basis.

Even if you'd seen the orange drop to the floor?

Seriously? They mop the floor twice a day? This machine was out on the floor in the middle of the tables. It wasn't in the kitchen or behind a counter. I bet it gets swept once if it needs it.

I am germophobic. But I am pretty sure this happens a lot more in restaurant kitchen. If they drop something, they don't even bother to clean.

I'm positive of it. As far as the juicers go, I've seen the oranges wet in baskets that appear to have been at least rinsed, as well as straight out of the box. All fruit imported into the US has been thoroughly washed at the packing house. USDA regs. Not sure about domestic oranges, and of course they could be contaminated somehow in transit. I would prefer that they rinsed off the orange that fell on the floor, but it certainly wouldn't keep me from drinking the juice, or make me go out of my way to report it.

No doubt. But if they're dirty out in the open, they are probably doing MUCH worse things in the kitchen.

Yup. Frankly, I see far more cross contamination, unhygenic practices and downright scary food handling practices in friends' kitchens than I do restaurants. Two weeks ago a friend gave herself food poisoning (that the doctor said was likely from mishandled raw poultry). It didn't surprise me in the slightest, as I have seen her touch food prep surfaces / cooked foods after touching raw meat. Several of my friends are super smart, but still blank when it comes to food hygine (heck, I have a surgeon friend who would be ultra diligent about scrubbing in before surgery, but has dogs, and a '5 second rule' for things, including the cooked sunday roast that land on the floor [just pick off the hair] ) I still eat at their houses tho, and they still think I wash my hands too much while I am cooking!

Mopping floors, yes, I'd expect most places to mop the customer floor areas 2-3 times a day (after each meal service) - that's just normal. The amount of food and sticky pop drinks people drop means it is necessary if you don't want a pig sty of a restaurant.

The things you don't see in restaurant kitchens would make you never eat out again. Better to not see it and strengthen your immune system. :D Okay, just tweaking the germaphobes here.

I worked at Wendy's when I was in college. This was back when they had the ground beef delivered in huge tubes unfrozen, and we had a huge patty machine that we used every night to prep for the next day. (I think they've since joined McDonalds in having meat pattied and frozen in distribution centers.) Once one of our more arrogant guys was training a new manager on how to patty the meat. He dropped a patty on the floor, picked it up and put it back in the hopper. The manager trainee said nothing, just seemed to absorb this as part of the process. She wasn't the sharpest knife, but then so many of the manager trainees they ran through the place weren't.

The comments about people not knowing food hygiene are true also. I learned it working there. (And people say you don't learn anything at a fast food job.... I learned quite alot, actually.) I still rotate food in my pantry, fridge and freezer - even canned goods!

Oh, back on topic, I almost forgot to add a funny story about orange juice in Scotland. Some years back the ex and I had a lovely vacation tour around England, Scotland and Ireland. We noticed that the further north you went in Great Britian, the smaller the servings of orange juice were. It apparently is very precious there. In Scotland they served it in what we Americans would call shot glasses. At a catered family reunion, the ex actually snuck into the kitchen area and downed a few shot glasses of OJ when nobody was looking. He said he felt like a junky. LOL

back to orange juice. when on the road, drink only canned or fresh ssqueezed that you see squeezed. i would not worry about a few hand prints. , but this board seems to have the biggest collection of germophobs i have ever come across.

never never drink juice out of a "presqueezed" container. i am certain the juice we drank on a Nile cruise had the kiss of the Nile upon it. did big harm to us, would have killed a practicing germophob.

That takes us back to why so many of us like Diet Coke for breakfast. There is nothing worse (tasting) than canned OJ. I think the OJ in a carafe in a major hotel in Europe is probably not going to be an issue either.

Just be sure to wash the can of diet coke really well first! (Cans of pop often left on the floor of cellars - rodents have free run over them, and as you may know, mice dribble urine almost constantly as they move about.)

Of course it could be post mix... Which is lovely, if they actually clean the lines properly and frequently, otherwise the build up can be really nasty, and
you can get insect pests in the system! mmmmmm

There are times I really wish I hadn't spent time in kitchens / restaurants / cellars!!! But as my granny said, a little dirt never hurt! I still eat out several times a week, and am still standing!

When you say "canned", do you mean physically in cans, or are you including cartons and bottles as well?

There's some awful from-concentrate orange juice in the UK (and thankfully plenty decent stuff too), but very little of it is sold in cans.

(OTOH, we do apple juice much better than orange, thanks to all the orchards around the country...)

Well, often you can't tell where it's from, but it tastes like it's canned, like Hi-C (a canned "juice" drink with about 3% actual juice) sold in the U.S. (it used to be sold, maybe still is, in 1/2 gallon cans) that is pretty awful. But I"ve had bottled and juice in cartons that is pretty bad too. Some of the premium brands in cartons are the next best thing to fresh squeezed IMHO.

Oh, I've not come across that in restaurants - it tends to be the 'Tropicana' type juice if it is not freshly squeezed. The one that I have never come across in a restaurant, just in people's homes, that I think fits the bill is 'Sunny Delight' only partially juice - disgusting! What I do notice is that North American 100% orange juice seems to taste a lot sweeter than 100% juice I get in the UK - perhaps that is part of the taste difference?

Oh, I know what else you sometimes find, but not in half decent restaurants - orange juice that comes out of a post-mix gun (like coke etc). That stuff is pretty nasty, but I wouldn't expect that in a restaurant at breakfast.