It must be a restaurant manager's worst nightmare: a large party of customers in for a celebratory meal, and every one of them an environmental health officer.
That was the scenario for Langton's, a leading hostelry in Kilkenny last week, when officers who carry out food inspections for the South Eastern Health Board gathered to mark an unprecedented achievement.
The board had just become the first agency in the State to be awarded the prestigious ISO 9002 standard for food control.
It sounds impressive, but what does it mean? Mr Frank Menton, principal environmental health officer for Carlow-Kilkenny, said the 34 officers employed by the board now have a consistent quality control system in place.
"A big problem over the years has been ensuring we have uniform procedures. If you have more than 25 officers checking hotels, supermarkets, restaurants and so on, how do you ensure that we all do it the one way, that it's consistent?"
The standard now in place applies to all aspects of the officers' work. "In the case of prosecutions, for example, it covers questions like `when do you prosecute?', `what are the grounds?' and so on. It means standards are applied evenly across the board," says Mr Menton.
It may sound straightforward, but it took more than two years of extraordinary effort for the board's staff to arrive at the internationally-recognised ISO standard.
Staff from the board got together with colleagues from the North Eastern and North Western Health Boards and agreed on standard procedures. Management consultants were employed to assist with the process, and each board set up local steering groups.
Officers from the four separate divisions in the south-east audited each other to ensure consistent standards were being applied. Last November, when the time came to apply for ISO accreditation, the National Standards Authority of Ireland carried out a rigorous audit of the South East board's inspection procedures.
"It was an extraordinary experience," said Mr Menton. "They missed nothing, but at the end they said they were recommending our application. It was a great feeling of achievement because we had worked so hard for it."
Mr Menton knows of only two agencies in England which have achieved the same quality mark. The South Eastern Health Board is one of 47 agencies which provide an inspection service for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. Speaking at the accreditation award ceremony, the chief executive of the FSAI, Dr Patrick Wall, said the board had set a standard for the other 46 agencies to match.
The North Western and North Eastern Health Boards will be applying for ISO accreditation later this year.
And despite what you might see in the movies, health inspectors don't close down restaurants on the spot if they find a fly in their soup.
"No, you wouldn't suddenly decide to inspect the kitchen while on a night out," said Mr Menton. "That would be totally unprofessional."