How restaurant grades work

Every city inspects restaurants differently. Here’s how to read each one, and how we translate the official language.

Severity levels

Each violation gets one of three labels, based on the health department’s own classification:

  • Critical problems can directly make someone sick: food held at unsafe temperatures, contamination, rodents or roaches, or workers not washing their hands. NYC calls these “critical,” Chicago “priority” or risk-factor items, and King County “red.”
  • General problems are about cleanliness and upkeep: dirty equipment, plumbing, broken surfaces, or gaps that could let pests in.
  • Paperwork covers missing signs, posters, permits or records. These don’t affect food safety directly.

The plain-English wording is ours. The official wording, and the inspector’s own notes where the city publishes them, appear under every violation.

New York City

  • Inspectors add points for each violation. Lower is better.
  • 0–13 points earns an A. 14–27 is a B. 28 or more is a C.
  • A restaurant that scores 14 or more on its first inspection gets no grade yet. It is re-inspected about a month later and can display “Grade Pending” in the meantime.
  • Critical violations, such as unsafe food temperatures or evidence of rodents, carry the most points.

About 30,000 restaurants and cafeterias in active operation across all five boroughs, with inspections from the last three years.

Chicago

  • Chicago doesn’t give letter grades or scores. Each inspection is Pass, Pass with Conditions, or Fail.
  • Pass with Conditions means serious problems were found but fixed or corrected during the inspection.
  • Fail means violations serious enough that the business must be re-inspected, and it may be closed until it passes.
  • Restaurants are also ranked by risk (1 = high, 3 = low), which sets how often they’re inspected.

Restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, schools and other food businesses in Chicago, with inspections back to 2010. Lists show places inspected in the last two years.

Seattle & King County

  • Inspectors add points for each violation, so a lower score is better. 0 means no violations.
  • Red violations are high-risk practices that can directly cause foodborne illness. Blue violations are lower-risk maintenance and sanitation issues.
  • Routine inspections with 35 or more red points, or 90 or more total points, are unsatisfactory and require a return inspection.
  • The posted window sign (Excellent, Good, Okay, Needs to Improve) is based on the average of the last four routine inspections.

Restaurants, cafés, food trucks, grocery stores and other food businesses across Seattle and King County, with inspections since 2021.

Austin

  • Every inspection starts at 100 points, and points are taken off for each violation. Higher is better.
  • 90 or above is good. 70 to 89 means several violations.
  • A score below 70 fails and requires a follow-up inspection.
  • Austin publishes scores only, not which violations were found. For details, ask Austin Public Health for the inspection report.

Restaurants and other food businesses in Austin and Travis County (including Pflugerville, Round Rock and more), with the last three years of routine inspection scores.

Data sources

Data is pulled live from each portal and cached for up to an hour. Health departments usually publish results a few days to a few weeks after an inspection. We don’t change any results. If something looks wrong, check the official record and contact the agency.

Why not San Francisco? San Francisco’s public inspection dataset hasn’t been updated since 2019, so we don’t show it rather than show stale grades.