Montgomery County, Maryland ran 4,816 routine inspections of licensed food service facilities between October 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026. 4,710 (97.8%) ended Pass, 78 (1.6%) Fail, 25 (0.5%) Closed and 3 with another status. Pass does not mean every item was clear: 1,012 of the 1,042 inspections with the rodents and insects item marked “Not In Compliance” still ended Pass, because the county classes that item as a good retail practice, which can get up to 30 days to fix.
These are our counts from the county’s open dataset HHS – Food Inspection Data from July 2024 and onward (dkrp-gr48, updated daily; last update October 24, 2026). The older FoodInspection-API feed stopped at inspections from October 3, 2024.
Routine inspections, October 2025 to September 2026:
| Measure | Inspections | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Routine inspections (Monitoring, Comprehensive, Annual) | 4,816 | 100% |
| Status Pass | 4,710 | 97.8% |
| Status Fail | 78 | 1.6% |
| Status Closed | 25 | 0.5% |
| Any item marked Not In Compliance or Corrected Onsite | 2,262 | 47.0% |
| Any item still Not In Compliance at the end of the visit | 1,505 | 31.3% |
| Rodents and insects item Not In Compliance | 1,042 | 21.6% |
| Cold holding item cited (open or corrected onsite) | 973 | 20.2% |
How Montgomery County inspects restaurants
Licensure & Regulatory Services, in the Department of Health and Human Services, inspects licensed food facilities under Maryland’s food code (COMAR 10.15.03). The dataset description sorts facilities by risk. High-priority kitchens prepare food a day or more ahead or combine processes such as cooking, cooling and reheating; moderate ones cook food served within four hours; low ones sell prepackaged food that is not potentially hazardous.
Two kinds of routine visit show up in the records. A comprehensive inspection covers sanitation, maintenance and food handling. A monitoring inspection checks food temperatures, equipment temperatures and handling. The county’s Food Inspection Violations guide (April 2026) sets the yearly target at three inspections for high-priority facilities, two for moderate and one for low.
How to look up a Montgomery County restaurant
- Open HHS – Food Inspection Data from July 2024 and onward and use the filter on Name of establishment or Address.
- Check the city and ZIP. Chains have several licenses, and each location has its own registration number.
- Sort by inspection date. One visit can appear as many identical rows in this dataset (one visit we checked repeated 327 times), so treat rows with the same inspection number, registration number and date as one inspection.
- Read the Status column first, then the item columns. The dataset carries 16 item columns rather than all 38 form items. Each item shows In Compliance, Corrected Onsite, Not In Compliance, Not Observed or Not Applicable, with “Repeat Violation” added when the same item was cited before.
- For a closed facility, call the business. The county notes that a closed facility may have reopened before its reinspection result is posted.
Questions about a specific inspection go to Licensure & Regulatory Services at 240-777-3986. Our older Montgomery County inspection search guide covers matching a facility across the two datasets.
Why a Pass can carry a rodent violation
The county guide splits the inspection form in two. Items 1 to 9 are food safety requirements; an uncorrected one leads to suspension of the food license until it is fixed (COMAR 10.15.03.31). Items 10 to 38 are good retail practices, which may get up to 30 days for correction when there is no immediate danger. Rodents and insects is item 22, so a kitchen with droppings or a gap under the back door can still end the visit with Pass.
That is the single most common open item in the data. 1,042 routine inspections (21.6%) left it Not In Compliance, and only 16 marked it Corrected Onsite. Temperature items work the other way: of 973 cold-holding citations, 830 (85.3%) were corrected on site.
| Item | Not In Compliance | Corrected Onsite | Cited either way |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rodents and insects | 1,042 | 16 | 22.0% |
| Cold holding temperature | 143 | 830 | 20.2% |
| Hot holding temperature | 55 | 301 | 7.4% |
| Toxic substances and pesticides | 260 | 76 | 7.0% |
| Food protected from contamination | 28 | 205 | 4.8% |
| Proper hand washing | 22 | 206 | 4.7% |
| Trans fat ban | 107 | 2 | 2.3% |
To see whether a pest item cleared, open the next inspection for the same registration number.
What Fail and Closed looked like in 2025-26
The 78 Fail inspections most often had rodents and insects open (27), hot and cold running water (17), cold holding (11), hand washing (8) and toxic substances (8). 51 of the 78 have a later record, at a median of 2 days, and 43 of those 51 ended Pass.
25 routine inspections ended Closed. Only 3 of those facilities have a later record so far, and the county notes that reinspection results for a reopened facility can post late.
Montgomery County results by city and risk level
Cities with at least 120 routine inspections, sorted by the share with any item cited. “Pests open” means the rodents and insects item was left Not In Compliance.
| City | Inspections | Any cited | Pests open | Fail/Closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bethesda | 505 | 54.7% | 27.9% | 2.0% |
| Gaithersburg | 617 | 50.1% | 20.1% | 1.8% |
| Silver Spring | 1,462 | 49.9% | 24.8% | 2.2% |
| Potomac | 122 | 41.0% | 16.4% | 0.0% |
| Rockville | 870 | 38.5% | 16.8% | 2.3% |
| Olney | 136 | 36.8% | 8.8% | 0.7% |
| Germantown | 297 | 34.7% | 8.8% | 5.1% |
Germantown’s Fail or Closed rate, 5.1%, is more than twice the countywide 2.1% (103 of 4,816), though on small numbers. By license risk level, high-priority facilities had any item cited in 56.5% of 2,710 routine inspections, moderate in 38.6% of 1,666 and low in 19.8% of 440. High-priority kitchens have more items that apply (cooling, reheating, hot holding), which may partly explain their higher rate.
Visit counts in the data run below the guide’s schedule. Of 2,121 high-priority facilities with a routine inspection in the year, 76.0% have exactly one and 3.2% have three or more. Facilities licensed partway through the year are included, so some shortfall is expected. If a restaurant’s last visit is old, ask Licensure & Regulatory Services whether a newer one is pending posting.
How we counted
- Unit: one inspection, meaning one registration number, inspection number, date and inspection type, after removing identical repeated rows. Where repeated rows disagreed on an item, the more serious value was kept.
- Routine inspections are the types Monitoring, Comprehensive and Annual. Reinspections, complaint visits and pre-opening visits count only as later records.
- Facilities are licenses of the subtypes Food Service Facility License-High, -Moderate and -Low. New, mobile, seasonal, nonprofit and change-of-ownership license subtypes are excluded.
- “Any item cited” means at least one of the 16 item columns shows Not In Compliance or Corrected Onsite, including repeat versions.
- City is the city field as entered, uppercased.
For other Maryland lookups, see our guides to Prince George’s County and Baltimore inspections, and what happens when a restaurant fails an inspection in other cities. Montgomery County dataset and Food Inspection Violations guide checked October 25, 2026.