Lewiston, Maine publishes an alphabetical index of city restaurant inspection reports. Each establishment can have several dated links marked Passed or Failed. Those words are useful navigation labels, but the linked report is where you can check the visit’s purpose, critical and noncritical observations, correction notes and any follow-up date. A passed follow-up need not be a blank report.
Match the location and open every relevant date
Find the establishment by name in the city’s alphabetical list, then verify the street address. Select the date you care about and save the PDF link, not just the list’s status. For a Failed entry, inspect the next linked report for the same location and license identity. A similarly named branch or a record from a different address should not be joined to that sequence.
Lewiston says the city posts reports for establishments it inspects and has done so since April 2014. It describes C as critical and N as noncritical on its inspection page. Its stated failure rule is more than three critical violations or more than ten noncritical violations. It also says a failed inspection receives a reinspection within 30 days or less and critical violations must be corrected within 10 days. These are the city’s program rules. To find out what happened at one establishment, use the separately dated report rather than turning the rule into an assumed visit or verified correction.
| Place to read | What it can establish | What still needs a report |
|---|---|---|
| City index | Establishment link, displayed visit date and Passed/Failed label | Inspection purpose, cited items and correction text |
| Initial PDF | Printed date, Regular or other purpose, findings and a stated follow-up date | Whether the return occurred and what it found |
| Follow-up PDF | Actual return date and its own findings and status boxes | The condition on any later day or a separate closure/reopening action |
A historical pair shows the difference
An anonymized example on the city index links a May 11, 2023 regular inspection PDF marked Failed. Its first page records eight critical and seven noncritical violations. The form’s Follow-up field says Yes and gives May 25 as the intended return date. The report also has separate Failed, Closed and imminent-health-hazard boxes; Failed is checked, while the other two are not. Do not restate this as a closure.
The city’s next linked PDF is dated May 24, 2023, one day earlier than the original form’s scheduled date. Its purpose is Full Follow-up. The index labels it Passed, and the later form does not check Failed, Closed or imminent-health-hazard. Yet the later report lists one critical and one noncritical observation; item 20 on cold holding and a separate noncritical item carry repeat marks. The useful conclusion is precise: a full return visit occurred on May 24 and the city indexed its outcome as Passed, while the PDF still contains observations. A Passed label does not mean the follow-up report contains no observations, and it does not prove current safety. The pair establishes only the dated visits and findings actually shown.
This comparison is historical and limited to two public PDFs. The city index also has later dates for that establishment, which would need separate reading for any question about a later period. The example does not describe the restaurant today, and it does not justify an adverse claim about the business from old records.
Keep the form’s fields separate
On each PDF, record the printed inspection date and purpose first. A date in a Follow-up box on an initial report is a planned date; the date at the top of a later PDF is evidence that a visit took place. Next, read the critical and noncritical counts together with the marked item rows and narrative observations. The form defines OUT as not in compliance, COS as corrected on site, and R as repeat. COS belongs to an item during that visit. R calls attention to the inspector’s repeat designation. Neither is an all-purpose present-day status.
If the city index says Passed but the PDF lists an observation, retain both statements. The label reports the city’s indexed inspection outcome; the observation reports what the inspector saw or documented that day. Do not change Passed into Failed by private arithmetic, and do not delete an observation because Passed appears on the list. If a cited item matters, read its code, note and any explicit correction instruction before comparing it with a later report. The reinspection and follow-up guide shows how to preserve that dated sequence.
For an older or missing link, a question about whether one item was verified, or a claimed closure or reopening, ask Lewiston’s city inspection office for the specific dated report and any separate action record. The Maine state-search guide explains the state portal’s shorter displayed window; this city index is a separate route for city-inspected establishments. An empty state search is therefore not a complete Lewiston history. The city page does not promise that every later document or enforcement action is contained in the alphabetical index.
Official city index and the linked historical PDFs checked October 16, 2026. Use the latest official record for any time-sensitive decision; these 2023 reports do not assess a facility’s current safety or operating status.