Start with the country and the restaurant’s exact city or region, then find the authority responsible for that premises. There is no single worldwide restaurant-inspection search. Some official pages below route you to local authorities; others contain actual business ratings or inspection histories.
Keep the local scoring system attached to the result. A NYC letter, a Toronto sign and a food-hygiene rating are not interchangeable. Search the branch by name and address, open its dated result and check later official entries before comparing restaurants.
Find the authority behind international restaurant inspection sources
Use the official starting points below to identify the right local search. A national food-safety information page is not itself an inspection report for a particular restaurant.
- FDA state retail food program contacts
- Canada restaurant inspection routing
- NYC Health Restaurant Grades
- LA County Inspection Results
- Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Ratings
- NSW Scores on Doors food hygiene ratings
Pin down the location before opening a portal
Start with the full facility address or license number; similar place names can belong to different authorities or portal systems.
- Restaurant name, address and country
- Responsible city, county, region or local health authority
- Postcode, facility number or another supported identifier
- Current and archived portal names
Follow the directory to the authority’s own search
- Confirm the country, state or province, local jurisdiction, and health department responsible for the result.
- Match the restaurant address to the authority’s service area before selecting a search system.
- Check whether the system publishes ratings, full inspection reports, enforcement actions or only a directory, and note its date coverage.
- Open the health department’s own search page and run the required check with the facility address or license number.
- Save the final health department URL rather than treating the inspection-source directory as the underlying result.
Use the underlying record as the answer
The inspection-source directory has done its job when it reaches the health department; the final answer must come from that authority’s current result or service page.
| Official starting point | Scope and search decision |
|---|---|
| United States — FDA retail-food information | Use it to understand state and local responsibility, then use the inspecting jurisdiction’s own restaurant search. |
| Canada — CFIA restaurant/food-service routing | Follow the province or local health-authority route. Toronto DineSafe covers Toronto, not all of Canada. |
| England, Wales and Northern Ireland — Food Standards Agency | Use the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme business search for those jurisdictions. Do not assume that this scheme covers every part of the United Kingdom. |
| New South Wales, Australia — Scores on Doors | Check the participating local-council scheme and premises coverage. This is not a nationwide Australian inspection database. |
Save the final authority and facility-result URL, not just this directory. If a location is missing, ask which body licenses or inspects that premises and whether its detailed reports are publicly searchable or available by request.
For a U.S. state example, the Iowa inspection-report guide shows how to route a search to the official system, match the licensed establishment, and check later inspection entries before describing the result.
Why a 5, an A and a 92 are not the same result
Scales differ in direction, range and meaning, so convert nothing. A few examples from official sources checked October 20, 2026 (North Carolina rule link updated October 24, 2026):
- England, Wales and Northern Ireland: the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme runs from 5 (very good) down to 0 (urgent improvement required). Higher is better. The rating combines three elements: food handling, the physical condition of the premises, and how the business manages food safety. Low-risk businesses such as newsagents selling only prepacked goods, and childminders, are inspected but exempt from a rating.
- New York City: violation points, where 0 to 13 points is an A, 14 to 27 a B and 28 or more a C. Lower is better.
- North Carolina: a percentage score, where 90 or above is an A under the state grading rule (15A NCAC 18A .2662). Higher is better, and scores can exceed 100 with an education credit.
- Delaware: the state’s inspection list shows visit types and Food Code section numbers with no score or grade at all.
Display rules differ too. Under the UK scheme, businesses in Wales and Northern Ireland must display their rating by law, while display in England is voluntary. A missing sticker in England says nothing on its own; the same gap in Cardiff is a compliance question. Scotland is not part of that scheme, so a Scottish restaurant won’t have a 0–5 rating to look up there.
How fresh the online result is
Check how often the authority updates its public listing before treating the online result as the latest visit. The UK guidance says local authorities upload ratings at least every 28 days, and that a sticker and the website can briefly differ while an appeal is pending or an upload is in progress. It also says inspection intervals run from six months for the highest-risk businesses to two years for lower-risk ones, and that other monitoring methods mean the published inspection date may not be the most recent check. In Canada, Toronto’s DineSafe is a city system; our Toronto DineSafe guide covers how its results differ from a score.
For a UK premises, the rating page names the local authority that inspected it. The UK guidance says the full inspection report can be requested from that authority through a Freedom of Information request, and the authority will usually send a copy or explain why it can’t.
If the inspection-source directory does not list the location
Check nearby government levels and alternate names because another health department may hold the data instead of the city.
Contact the likely health department and ask which current or archive system accepts the facility address or license number.
The UK Food Standards Agency can show Rating Awaited or Awaiting Publication instead of a number. Use the pending food hygiene rating status guide to distinguish an inspection that has not produced a published rating from a rating held during an appeal.