NYC restaurant inspection grades and violations

Every search on this page is answered by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s public dataset, DOHMH New York City Restaurant Inspection Results, read straight from NYC Open Data at the moment you press Search. Nothing is copied here in between and nothing you type is sent anywhere except to that data service.

When this page was built, on 28 September 2026, the dataset held 295,186 rows for 31,361 establishments. Its newest inspection was dated 23 September 2026 and its extract was dated 25 September 2026. 3,814 of those establishments had applied for a permit and had not yet been inspected.

The dataset covers restaurants and college cafeterias that are in active status on the day of the extract, and their inspections for up to three years before the most recent one. A restaurant that has gone out of business is removed, so a place you remember may simply not be there. The cuisine list in the form holds the 90 cuisine descriptions that were in the data on 28 September 2026; the description is an optional field the owner or manager supplies.

One row in the city’s data is one violation — not one inspection and not one restaurant. This page groups the rows for you. A search lists establishments, 25 at a time, in order of name. A record lists one establishment’s inspections in date order, newest first, with a button to turn the order round, and under each inspection the violations that were cited at it.

• Inspection type and action are the dataset’s own words: which programme visited, and what the inspection led to. When two programmes visited on the same day, each is listed on its own, because each has its own score.
• Score is the total of the points for that inspection. A lower score is a better one. How NYC restaurant grades and points work explains where points come from and when a score becomes a letter.
• Grade is shown only where the dataset holds one for that inspection, with its grade date. Many inspections are scored and not graded.
• Critical and Not Critical are the dataset’s flag. Its data dictionary describes critical violations as the ones most likely to contribute to foodborne illness.
• Not yet inspected. The dataset gives an establishment that has a permit application and no inspection the date 1 January 1900. This page says “not yet inspected” instead of showing that date.

The latest grade at the top of a record is found the way the Health Department’s own notes for the dataset set out: take the re-inspections and reopening inspections, and the initial inspections that scored 13 or less, keep those carrying a grade of A, B, C or a Grade Pending code, and use the newest. An initial inspection that scores 14 or more is not graded, so a restaurant’s latest grade can be older than its latest inspection.

• The city updates the dataset daily, and it still runs behind the inspectors: what you see is the extract, not this morning’s visit.
• Scores are revised when a hearing changes them, and a violation dismissed at a hearing is removed from the data. A record can therefore change after the fact.
• The department warns that the data is compiled from several administrative systems, holds some illogical values and can be missing values, and that a score and a grade do not always agree.
• When a re-inspection ends in a B or a C the restaurant is given that grade card and a Grade Pending card, and the data cannot tell which of the two is in the window.
• The borough and the ZIP code of one establishment can disagree, because a mailing address and a physical location can differ.
• The name search matches any part of the registered business name. It does not correct spelling.

The city’s own lookup is the authority. ABCEats is the Health Department’s restaurant inspection lookup and comes from the same source as the dataset. Where this page and ABCEats, or the card in a restaurant’s window, disagree, the city is right. This page reports public records; it gives no advice about where to eat.

The borough-by-borough count of latest grades is on restaurant grades by borough. For choosing a table rather than reading a record, this section belongs to the New York City guide.