Outside Writers’ Buildings, 12.30 pm.

Serve Safe Food. What’s that? The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) could do well to start its clean-kitchen campaign from the footpath along the state’s administrative headquarters.

As the babus descend upon the food stalls lining Writers’ Buildings for lunch-time variety, they are greeted by a myriad menu — and a veritable animal farm.

Crows perch on the side of washing-up bowls, nibbling on leftover rice and leaving their droppings in the same bowls. Stray dogs, having refined the art of sensing generosity among the regulars, hustle them for the leftovers. And then there are the rats to complete the Writers’ food circus.

With everything from biryani to dosa to luchi being served to the hungry hordes, hygiene can go hang. Helping hands at various stalls bark at prospective diners, urging — nay, ordering — them to try what they assure is the best biryani this side of Delhi.

Busier than any Park Street food address can ever hope to be at mealtime, this zone is filled with loyalists for whom hygiene is not a hurdle to a munch on the move.

Ashok Sen, from an office in BBD Bag, sums up why this footpath food is so popular. “It is both cheap and convenient. Who has the time or money to waste in a plush restaurant during lunch break?”

But isn’t it unsafe? “I don’t think it’s safe for someone like you,” chuckles Sen. “But seriously, the turnover is so high during peak time that a plate of piping hot food is least likely to be contaminated.”

Point taken. But if the food served hot doesn’t give a first-timer a Calcutta belly, the drinking water surely will. Vast vats of water of indeterminable quality are used for both drinking and washing up. “I think the food is fine, but I would think twice before drinking out of one of those barrels of water. Water here is more dangerous than the food,” says a Writers’ babu.

Outside CMC headquarters. 1.15 pm.

The food stalls in the vicinity of the civic headquarters are marginally more hygienic, and organised. Some even offer a basin to wash your hands after a mid-day meal.

But the washing of plates and utensils is frightful. The kids at work give each used plate a casual wash down — over a gutter — before passing it back to serve the next man in the lunch line.

Then there are the fruit stalls. As the end-March temperature rises, the cut-fruit platter in glass cases given an occasional splash of filthy water to keep it looking fresh, or the rows of fruit propped against the stalls, vulnerable to the raised leg of any passing canine, are popular picks.

Why not start the Serve Safe Food from here?

“These are unlicensed food vendors. We can conduct a hygiene check here and fail these vendors, but then what? We can’t even slap a case against vendors who don’t hold a licensed address,” explained a CMC official.