Gauri Khan’s Torii co-founder says ‘fly, insect or hair in food’ is a ‘part and parcel of doing work’: ‘It will happen at a restaurant, and at home’

He also spoke about storing and serving raw meats, and the superfreezer that is essential if a restaurant intends to serve such food items. “At Torii, we serve raw meat. We have sushi, sashimi, ceviche, we have raw meats. Is it safe to just remove the meat from the freezer and serve it? No. The food has to be kept in a particular piece of equipment called a superfreezer. And the superfreezer takes the food down to -60 and -70 degrees, which does not let any bacteria grow in the food. Such things are more important than anything else,” he said and added that many restaurants don’t have this piece of equipment. “I won’t be surprised if not more than a handful of restaurants actually have this equipment in their restaurant, which is a standard in any big city. If you don’t have this, you can’t serve this kind of food,” he said.

He then added that missteps might happen at restaurants but he sees them as a part of the business. “And a small probably a fly or insect or a piece of hair that comes into your food, that’s part and parcel of doing work. It happens at your homes, it happens at your workplace and it will happen at a restaurant, and nothing can change that.”

Torii found itself in some controversy after content creator Sarthak Sachdeva accused them of serving ‘fake’ paneer. The chef at the restaurant, Stefan Gadit, later told SCREEN that the controversy helped the business. “It increased our business and I got more than 20-30 followers on Instagram, so that was a blessing in disguise, I would say,” he said. He shared that Sarthak later pulled down the video and added, “We did speak to the gentleman and tried to get a sense of how things are done in the culinary world and how food science works. He understood and took off the post. We, as a team, as the management, believe that people are smart enough to understand what was going on.”