WELCOME to the 'all you can eat' guide to the best and worst food hygiene scores in London.
The Advertiser has taken an in-depth look at the latest inspection data from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to form a comprehensive picture of the cleanliness of the capital's eateries.
Information on some 54,955 inspections in London is stored on the FSA website.
Among the businesses to score 0 in 2014 were Jamies, a bar in central London; 196 restaurants and cafes; a branch of WH Smith in Westminster and Lunchtime UK ltd, a catering company based in Enfield which provides school meals.
Thirty-two schools in London scored less than three, which is considered a fail.
You can use our interactive graphic below to look through every food hygiene score in London.
Croydon, which has an average of 3.79, has the most number of zero ratings with 54 while, perhaps unsurprisingly, Westminster has the most five-star ratings, with 1,567, though Southwark, Redbridge and Camden have all topped the 1,000 mark.
A map of every food hygiene rating in London, from zero (dark red) to five (dark green)
Marks and Spencer is the most hygienic supermarket in the capital, with its stores earning an average of 4.92 out of five, while the Co-operative and Asda are lagging behind the competition. And, just as Tesco has lost some of its share of the market to Lidl and Aldi, statistics show the discount chains are also out-performing their more established rivals when it comes to cleanliness too.
London's most hygienic restaurant chain is Italian cuisine specialists Zizzi (4.92) though many of the biggest players, including McDonald's (4.85) and Pret a Manger (4.89), scored highly.
The other end of the scale does not make for appetising reading for fans of fried chicken, with Chicken Cottage (2.90) and Dixy Chicken (2.95) performing relatively poorly. In fact, nearly half of the 22 Dixie Chicken branches in London subject to an inspection failed to meet the required standard of three or above.
The table on this page shows data on many other popular chains.
Some 7,979 inspections – one in ten – of the 54,955 takeaways, supermarkets, restaurants and hotels, as well as hospitals, butchers, bakers and schools, inspected in London have been given a 0, 1 or 2 rating.
Inspectors assess using three criteria: how hygienically food is handled, the condition of the building and how it manages itself in order to maintain cleanliness.
Since 2010, some 527 inspections have resulted in a score 0 which means urgent improvements are required. According to the FSA, such businesses are very likely to be performing poorly in all three areas and have a history of serious problems, including a lack of sufficient cleaning and disinfection, and poor management policies.
We looked at hygiene scores for businesses with certain types of food in their names, such as "kebab" or "chicken"
More than one-in-three London businesses featuring "kebab" in their name have failed a hygiene inspection. In fact, those 578 inspected eateries were given an average rating of just 2.9.
In comparison "pizza" traders scored 3.5, "chicken" got an average of 3 and "burger" scored four out of five.
The inspections are undertaken by local councils and the results are uploaded to the FSA website. In total, 23,703 inspections were carried out in London in 2014.
Unlike in Wales, businesses in England are not required to display their scores following inspections.
Average score by boroughScores by type of business