Are there “Ratatouille” restaurants? On anticorrelation of food quality and hygiene

We study the empirical relationship between restaurants’ hygiene standards and their food quality scores, as evaluated by professional reviewers. By using data from the UK high-end restaurants, we show that this relationship is negative, observed across several econometric specifications and food quality measurements. We report that 3% of Michelin-starred restaurants have poor hygiene, while the same is true for 2.5% of high-end guidebook-listed restaurants in our dataset. We highlight two possibilities for this observed negative association: a strategic hypothesis (capturing restaurants’ choices trading off hygiene for quality), and a selection hypothesis (reflecting restaurants’ differential survival rates under competition). Our results indicate that the latter has more support. Our findings also illuminate potential channels through which the anticorrelation between hygiene and food quality could be mitigated and can be informative for hygiene inspectors in order to prioritize restaurants in their inspection schedule based on observable characteristics.