Chicago restaurants passed 58% of their routine health inspections between October 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026, passed with conditions on 19% and failed 22%. That citywide average hides a wide spread by neighborhood: the fail rate runs from 5% in ZIP 60610 (Near North Side) and 60659 to 59% in 60602, and the three core Loop ZIPs, 60601 to 60603, all fail 40% or more. Restaurants the city rates Risk 1 and Risk 2 fail at the same 22% rate.
These are our own counts from the city’s Food Inspections dataset on the Chicago Data Portal (updated October 23, 2026, pulled October 24, 2026). To look up one restaurant, see how to look up a Chicago restaurant inspection.
How Chicago records a routine inspection result
Instead of a number or a letter, each visit by the Chicago Department of Public Health ends with one of three results: Pass, Pass w/ Conditions (violations were found but corrected or addressed during the visit) or Fail. Visits where the business was gone or the inspector couldn’t get in are recorded as Out of Business, No Entry or Not Ready. We counted only the routine visits, which the city labels “Canvass,” so complaint visits and re-inspections don’t tilt the comparison.
Chicago restaurant fail rates by ZIP code
Of the ZIP codes with at least 40 routine restaurant inspections in the year, these had the highest and lowest fail rates:
- Highest: 60602 (59% of 44 inspections), 60619 (52% of 71), 60603 (52% of 60), 60601 (40% of 68), 60630 (34% of 65)
- Lowest: 60610 (5% of 147), 60659 (5% of 42), 60626 Rogers Park (6% of 51), 60652 (7% of 55), 60661 (7% of 45), 60643 (9% of 69)
The dataset doesn’t name the inspector, so a ZIP’s rate can reflect which inspection team covers it as much as the restaurants themselves. Use the table to set expectations for an area, then read the individual restaurant’s own history. O’Hare (60666) had 179 routine restaurant inspections, more than any neighborhood ZIP, and failed 16%.
| ZIP | Visits | Pass | Pass w/ Cond. | Fail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60601 | 68 | 35% | 25% | 40% |
| 60602 | 44 | 20% | 20% | 59% |
| 60603 | 60 | 17% | 32% | 52% |
| 60605 | 118 | 60% | 25% | 14% |
| 60606 | 109 | 62% | 24% | 14% |
| 60607 | 171 | 54% | 20% | 26% |
| 60608 | 142 | 66% | 14% | 20% |
| 60609 | 118 | 59% | 28% | 13% |
| 60610 | 147 | 88% | 7% | 5% |
| 60611 | 235 | 57% | 18% | 24% |
| 60612 | 69 | 33% | 45% | 22% |
| 60613 | 107 | 51% | 19% | 30% |
| 60614 | 155 | 55% | 23% | 23% |
| 60615 | 48 | 58% | 27% | 15% |
| 60616 | 143 | 66% | 10% | 24% |
| 60617 | 46 | 70% | 13% | 17% |
| 60618 | 127 | 65% | 13% | 21% |
| 60619 | 71 | 42% | 6% | 52% |
| 60620 | 57 | 77% | 12% | 11% |
| 60622 | 81 | 42% | 25% | 33% |
| 60623 | 121 | 67% | 12% | 21% |
| 60625 | 135 | 75% | 12% | 13% |
| 60626 | 51 | 78% | 16% | 6% |
| 60628 | 63 | 65% | 6% | 29% |
| 60629 | 105 | 66% | 12% | 22% |
| 60630 | 65 | 40% | 26% | 34% |
| 60632 | 169 | 47% | 21% | 32% |
| 60634 | 120 | 63% | 21% | 16% |
| 60638 | 127 | 81% | 8% | 11% |
| 60639 | 169 | 61% | 17% | 22% |
| 60640 | 119 | 51% | 34% | 15% |
| 60641 | 64 | 31% | 39% | 30% |
| 60642 | 98 | 50% | 20% | 30% |
| 60643 | 69 | 86% | 6% | 9% |
| 60647 | 160 | 55% | 19% | 26% |
| 60652 | 55 | 76% | 16% | 7% |
| 60654 | 146 | 51% | 21% | 28% |
| 60657 | 155 | 60% | 17% | 23% |
| 60659 | 42 | 81% | 14% | 5% |
| 60660 | 51 | 37% | 41% | 22% |
| 60661 | 45 | 67% | 27% | 7% |
| 60666 | 179 | 55% | 29% | 16% |
The table lists all 42 ZIPs with 40 or more routine restaurant inspections (“Visits”) that ended in Pass, Pass w/ Conditions or Fail. Rows may not add to 100% because of rounding.
Chicago inspection results by facility type
Restaurants account for about 7 in 10 routine food inspections in Chicago (5,569 of 7,874). Schools fail more often than restaurants (25%), and long-term care kitchens fail 31% of the time, though on only 48 inspections. Grocery stores pass at about the restaurant rate, but 30% of routine grocery visits found the store already out of business, the highest share of any common type.
| Type | Visits | Pass | Pass w/ Cond. | Fail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | 4,788 | 58% | 19% | 22% |
| School | 758 | 66% | 8% | 25% |
| Grocery store | 397 | 60% | 20% | 20% |
| Children’s services facility | 174 | 77% | 10% | 13% |
| Bakery | 107 | 58% | 17% | 25% |
| Daycare above and under 2 years | 92 | 88% | 3% | 9% |
| Catering | 48 | 77% | 15% | 8% |
| Long term care | 48 | 63% | 6% | 31% |
| Mobile food preparer | 44 | 73% | 7% | 20% |
Do Risk 1 restaurants fail more often in Chicago?
No. Risk 1 (High) restaurants failed 22% of 4,325 routine inspections and Risk 2 (Medium) restaurants 22% of 452. The risk category sets how often the city plans to visit, based on the kind of food a kitchen handles; it reflects the menu, and a kitchen’s own record is in its inspection results. Our guide to how often restaurants are inspected compares Chicago’s schedule with other cities. How fast Chicago re-inspects a Fail compared with New York, King County and LA County is in what happens if a restaurant fails a health inspection.
What a Chicago restaurant’s latest result usually shows
We took every restaurant license with a Pass, Pass w/ Conditions or Fail since October 1, 2023 and no Out of Business record, 8,945 in all, and looked at each one’s most recent result:
- 81% (7,232) show Pass as the latest result, 18% (1,611) Pass w/ Conditions and 1.1% (102) Fail.
- 33% (2,965) of those latest results are more than a year old, and 8% (707) are more than two years old.
- Of 1,067 routine inspections that failed during the year, 98% were followed by another inspection, half of them within 7 days. In 91% of those cases, the next visit didn’t end in Fail.
So a Fail is usually short-lived in Chicago records. The more useful thing to check on a listing is the date: a Pass from 2024 tells you less than one from last month.
Read a Chicago result in the score reader
Pick Chicago below and enter the result and violation counts from a report to see what it means on the city’s own scale.
The same kind of count for Los Angeles County is in our LA County inspection results by city.
Restaurant Inspection Check tool · rules checked October 21–23, 2026
Inspection score reader
Pick the program that inspected the restaurant, then enter what the report or door sign shows. The reader explains it on that agency's own scale and tells you what usually happens next.
How we counted
- Source: Chicago Food Inspections (4ijn-s7e5), which the city publishes from January 1, 2010 onward and warns may still contain some duplicate reports.
- Year: inspection dates from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026. Routine means inspection type “Canvass.” Restaurant means facility type “Restaurant.”
- Shares use only visits that ended in Pass, Pass w/ Conditions or Fail. The facility-type out-of-business share uses all routine visits of that type.
- “Latest result” uses records since October 1, 2023, and treats any license with an Out of Business record in that period as closed.
For the violations behind these results, see the most common health code violations, and for the same kind of count in New York, NYC restaurant grades by borough and cuisine, and in the Seattle area, King County inspection results by city. Chicago Data Portal pulled October 24, 2026.