At some of my favourite restaurants sometimes (perhaps one time in ten) a few fruit flies hover over my mixed salad.
At usual professional standards (good cooks/health inspectors/restaurant critics), is this considered unavoidable, or indicative of standards that leave something to be desired?
Depends on who you ask. Some health inspectors will write you up for it implying that it’s a bad thing, however, even our Orkin man said there’s no real way to get rid of them. There’s some things you can try, but there’s no real solution.
BTW, virtually every place you go to that has food (supermarket, taco bell, high end restaurant) probably has mice in or around the building.
Fruit flies, mice, ants, we do our best to control them, but it’s next to impossible to eliminate them.
Re the OP: It doesn’t indicate low standards or cleanliness problems, there’s other ways to tell those problems, but fruit flies IMHO isn’t one of them.