What you may get in some restaurants

Shocking revelations divulged to us by industry insiders show what is behind the scenes in some restaurants every day.

Even in our gloomy economic climate, and the fact that most of us have had bad experiences dining out, Australia's appetite for restaurant food is not waning.

The number of restaurants has increased 30 per cent over the past seven years.

Now there are almost 38,000 restaurants nationally and we spend almost $13 billion a year dining out.

Chef Alan Paul tells of the behind the scenes antics, how they cut corners and defile your food.

"What you could be getting is Sydney rock oysters which have been washed and refilled with oysters from a jar and you pay top dollar," he said.

"One of the most unhygienic practices is cutting up red meat and chicken on the same chopping board."

No wonder there are 5.5 million cases of gastroenteritis food poisoning caused by contaminated food each year in Australia.

Probably the most talked about restaurant stunt in history was the Coogee Bay Hotel's ice cream, contaminated with faecal matter.

DNA tests could not prove who the culprit was and eventually the customers served the ice cream and the hotel, resolved their dispute after mediation.

The top restaurant gripes in Australia include hidden costs like charging extra for bread, poor service, slowness in serving tap water and "specials" announced with no price that turn out to be more expensive than listed menu dishes.

But customers can be horrors too.

Nino Zoccali, proprietor and chef of Sydney's Pendolino restaurant said customers who book in as vegetarians have become ravenous meat-eaters over dinner.

She said a large table of wedding-party guests, who pre-warned they were strictly vegetarian, ended up eating meat.

"As the meat courses started coming in, 14 of the vegetarians decided they wanted to have the meat course during the middle of the meal," she said.

"Makes it tricky when you are trying to predict how much you will need and prepare the right amounts of meals."

There was an example at another restaurant when a man who tried to get out of paying his pub table's bill.

He showed the waiter a bunch of hair lying under the hamburger he had just eaten but CCTV cameras captured his foul act, earlier he pulled the hair from the back of his trousers, a premeditated act.

Local governments can prosecute and fine restaurants that violate food safety laws, but NSW is the only state where councils are required to publicly list offending food outlets on a name and shame website.

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