THE general response you get when talking to local restaurant owners about the EU tends to be one of the following: either, ‘I don’t really know what I’ve to do to come into line with the EU’; or, ‘I just haven’t got the money to make any big changes to my place, so I’m just going to ignore all this stuff’; or even, ‘No damned politician’s going to tell me how to prepare my souvla!’
Thankfully (for us the customers), there are some intelligent professionals out there, who see further than the revenue gleaned from a single summer season. These are the people who will not only survive, but will positively thrive, by offering customers a service in line with the dictates of the EU.
One such is Phivos Rousis. He has been a strong influence in the restaurant business for over 15 years, has set up many dining establishments in and around Paphos, and has made a name for himself as an advisory Godfather figure, helping other members of his profession to come into line with basic EU rulings.
“We now rely heavily on recommendations passed on to us via the government-recommended advisory body, the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point – pronounced hassip), a US-based organisation endorsed by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
“In fact, this organisation is key to any restaurateur who is willing, not only to learn, but to look to the future and invest in his business. They give all sorts of advice: from staff training, to health, and hygiene rulings, safety, stock control, along with a raft of other essential guidelines on how to run your business more effectively.
“To be honest, we all have a lot to learn, but change for some doesn’t come easy,” Rousis told the Sunday Mail this week
One typical example of change being frowned upon by restaurateurs in the tourist area is the municipality ruling that unlicensed extensions to establishments be removed. These include pergolas and elaborate entrance ways that impinge on public pavements, with the result that an all out strike was called on Tuesday by angry restaurant owners in Paphos.
The mere mention to a restaurant owner of the two letters ‘EU’, these days conjures up one word: ‘expensive’.
No-one, regardless of when their establishment was built, or what advice they had in the past, is anywhere near being close to fulfilling all the demands needed to become EU approved.
Rousis described the changes he had had to make to his Rib Shack restaurant, situated next to Cavellini, an Italian restaurant he was instrumental in setting up in the early nineties.
“By the time I am finished in about three weeks’ time, I will have spent around £15-16,000 just on the kitchen alone. All the fridges have been changed, we have altered the flooring so that there are no corners, only curves. Every unit in the kitchen now has to be a certain height off the ground in order to clean under them; all aluminium utensils are now banned, and everything has to be stainless steel. We now use five separate chopping boards, all colour-coded and, each one comes with its own special cleaning brush, to avoid any cross-contamination.
“The size of your kitchen now has to be at least 30 per cent of your dining area; we have also had to remove a spiral staircase as these have been outlawed as a means of access to any storage areas. In addition, all emergency exits have to be no more than 28 metres from any customer, and we have also put in emergency lighting in case of a power failure, along with ‘break glass’ boxes for customers to smash in the event of a fire.
“My staff have to have their own toilet, shower, and changing room. The chef has his own work station equipped with a mini hand basin and an automatic tap. We have fitted fly-screens to all windows, and doors in the kitchen; we have to create four store rooms needed to keep separately the restaurant’s linen, furniture, food and all drinks, and we have just completed building the disabled toilet and are just about to put in a secure ramp for wheelchair access to the restaurant.”
All sounds marvellous as far as the customer is concerned, but what is being done to educate the staff as far as to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of these changes, especially if staff have been used to working in a more casual kitchen environment?
“Again, we get help with training from HACCP, and also from CIKAP, which has offices in every town in Cyprus. They act for, and on behalf of restaurateurs and publicans island-wide, so really there is no excuse for an owner to be lazy about making changes.”
Rousis also uses the services of Basicare, a Nicosia-based company that takes charge of the chemicals and disinfectants that can and cannot be used in the kitchen and the dining area. There is now a law that dictates that any detergent, soap, cleaners of any sort used in a kitchen have to come with a product data sheet, which tells you everything about the content, usage, dangers, and possible reactions. All establishments, moreover, have to keep a record of how many times a week the kitchen is thoroughly cleaned, and with what substances.
The company also undertakes a food-friendly eradication of all bugs, from cockroaches to silver fish, through a smoke system that allows the treatment to be carried out in the morning with the dining room open again for business come evening.
“In the old days,” said Rousis, “the stuff we had was so toxic no wonder places had to stay closed for more than 24 hours after the spraying had been done.”
Knocked back by so much regulation I began to wonder if you didn’t need to be seriously rich to open a restaurant. Rousis wholeheartedly agreed, estimating his total bill for all the changes to come to about £30-35,000 – not exactly chicken feed, especially when predictions are for diminished tourist numbers this season.
“Believe me, few of the recently-opened establishment will be able to cope with all this, and many will have to close down.”
