Ravindra Jadeja's restaurant raided, stale food found
What’s the story?
According to a report in Ahmedabad Mirror, the Health Department of Rajkot Municipal Corporation raided Indian spinner Ravindra Jadeja’s restaurant on October 7 and discovered rotten food. A notice was issued to the restaurant which is run by the cricketer’s sister Nayanaba Aniruddhsinh Jadeja.
A large quantity of boiled food preserved for a long period, stale vegetables, bread infected with fungus and food items without any mention of their expiry dates were a few of the concerns.
Nainaba did not deny the claims made by the Health Municipal Corporation, and also assured that the restaurant would address all the issues soon.
“Yes, we had some quantity of boiled and cooked food. Only a few pieces of bread had gone stale. We used to preserve cooked food, but now we will ensure it is destroyed the same night. Also, we did not have a crusher,” said Nainaba.
“We could not find it in the market, but will make arrangements now. The food colours were meant to be used only for vegetable carvings and not in the food,” she added.
In case you didn’t know...
Food Field, as the restaurant is called, was set up by Jadeja in 2012. Based on the theme of cricket, the eatery serves Mexican, Chinese and Thai food. Jadeja is one of many cricketers to have his own restaurant, the others being Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, and Virender Sehwag.
The heart of the matter
Rajkot’s civic body conducted a raid at several leading local restaurants, out of which at least two dozen were served notices for lack of hygiene and presence of stale food. McDonald's was also one among those. All the restaurants have been given a period of four days to adhere to the basic rules and regulations of restaurant management.
What’s next?
Off the field, Jadeja missed Saurashtra’s first Ranji Trophy match against Haryana due to a wedding but will be back for the second game, against Jammu & Kashmir.
His participation in India’s premier domestic competition comes in the wake of his omission from the national team’s limited-overs squad for the series against Australia, in which Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav had made their mark.
The 28-year-old last played for India in the Test series against Sri Lanka.
Author’s take
Incidents such as these shed a bad light on cricketers' off-field innings and hence should be addressed immediately.