One of the five restaurants that the Riyadh municipality had padlocked nearly three weeks ago still has not reopened. Customers are wondering when it would resume its services.
“Even though a new fast-food outlet has opened near the restaurant, regular customers still pass by it every day to check if it has reopened for business,” an expatriate living near the eatery said on Monday.
The cell phone of the two owners was still off, as it had been since the restaurant was closed.
A resident in the area said he had heard that “the municipality inspectors found insufficiency in the equipment and the lighting facility was below standard.”
The inspectors also ordered the replacement of some of the floor tiles, like they did in the four other restaurants, which have already reopened, a Filipino residing near the restaurant said.
He added that it could have also been closed due to non-conformity to health and sanitation standards.
He said that he had eaten once at the restaurant and found that the food was exposed to air and flies and “because of that I had not come to the eatery anymore.”
“If there are customers still going there, it is because of the promotions it regularly has. On Fridays, it used to promote ‘Eat all you can’ for a very small amount,” he said.
The other restaurants that had reopened their doors for business said, “authorities should be more consistent in their implementation of guidelines.”
“In the past, when a municipality inspector visited us, he’d found no violations. When another showed up at our restaurant the following day, he’d find insufficiency in our equipment,” said an expat manager whose restaurant reopened 11 days after it was closed.
He also noticed that one restaurant in the area “was not closed at all despite a complete disregard for hygiene and sanitation.”
