Several cafes and restaurants frequented by Cambridge students have recently received low ratings for food hygiene, Varsity can reveal.

Under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS), all food businesses receive a score between 0 and 5. Five is the highest, while a 0 indicates that the business’s hygiene standards represent a risk to public health.

45 businesses in the Cambridge City area received ratings of 1 or 2, which denote respectively that “major improvement” or “improvement” is necessary. There are currently none in Cambridge with a score of 0.

Michaelhouse Cafe, situated on Trinity Street opposite Gonville and Caius’s Porters’ Lodge, received a rating of 1: “major improvement necessary”, reported an inspection last September.

Its owner, Bill Sewell, spoke to Varsity about what had led to the rating. He said that the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) “visited us when we had just had a large new oven installed and we hadn’t finished sorting out the new arrangements”.

Sewell said that the “cleaning [was] not good enough in the kitchen on the day we were visited”, and that they “had a deep clean immediately” and “refreshed and re-emphasised” cleaning procedures following the report. He also said that temperature control records had not been completed, and that labelling was “not always adequate”.

Sewell said: “On all these areas we are monitoring our progress to ensure that our operation is in excellent shape and that we achieve an improved rating when we are next visited”.

“I’m really surprised – I’d always thought Michaelhouse was clean and well-managed,” a Linguistics student told Varsity. “I hope they use this as a chance to rectify things. Just goes to show that maybe it’s best to keep an eye out for those stars in the window, and get suspicious if they’re not on display.”

Caffè Nero on King’s Parade received a rating of 2 (“improvement necessary”), at an inspection at the start of March. A student favourite, the coffee house is situated opposite King’s Chapel.

Despite repeated promises from the manager and assistant manager that they would give a response, Caffè Nero did not reply to Varsity’s requests for comment.

Clare College received a rating of 3, “generally satisfactory”, last September, while St John’s and Corpus Christi received ratings of 4, an EHO designation of “good”, in February and November respectively. All of Cambridge’s other colleges received ratings of 5 in recent inspections.

The Golden Curry Tandoori and Ocean Supermarket on Mill Road, Coffee Tree Cambridge, by Aldi, and Kang Qiao, by the Grafton Centre, have all received ratings of 1 within the past six months.

Fans of Cambridge nightlife will be pleased to hear that The Gardenia and the food van Uncle Frank’s both received the top rating of 5.

Two businesses linked to the university recently received low ratings: Origin8, in the Faculty of Education, and the Langley Larder cafe at the Post Graduate Medical Centre, both of which received ratings of 1.

Origin8 was recently re-inspected, and received a new rating of 5.

“The Origin8 cafe has always struck me as slightly overpriced,” a first-year Education student told Varsity, “which from a value for money angle makes finding out about its low hygiene rating in September quite shocking.

“I know it’s a business external to the university that runs it, and this suggests to me that the university should perhaps more closely monitor its functioning.”

In a statement, a university spokesperson said: “The university takes food safety very seriously. As soon as we are made aware that contractors have received a one-star rating we make arrangements for our own independent food safety consultants to visit to ensure the high standards we expect are maintained.

“The Langley Larder outlet at the Post Graduate Medical Centre, which had held a 5-star rating until this report, has now made changes to its operation and a better inspection report is expected.

“We set high standards for the way our contractors run food outlets throughout the University and expect a 4-star rating or above from all of them.”

In Wales, restaurants must display their hygiene rating or face a fine; this is not yet the case for those in England.

CB2 Bistro, which is located near Anglia Ruskin University, received a rating of two.

A spokesperson for the restaurant said: “Last year we have been through lots of changes which weren’t ready yet at the time when we had our inspection.”

They told Varsity that CB2 Bistro now has a new manager, “have changed a lot”, and resolved “all of [their] problems”.

“I can surely state that those problems will never happen again. We take everything more strict [sic] now,” the spokesperson said.