To check a Nassau County restaurant, use the Health Department’s Food Service Establishment Inspections search, which lists each inspection date with its count of critical and non-critical violations. In the 12 months from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, Nassau inspectors found at least one critical violation in 1,092 of 3,050 routine restaurant inspections (35.8%). The average across New York State outside New York City was 27.1%.
Those figures are our counts from New York State’s public inspection dataset, Food Service Establishment Inspections: Beginning 2005 (rows updated October 22, 2026).
| Nassau County, routine restaurant inspections | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Inspections, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026 | 3,050 | 100% |
| At least one critical violation | 1,092 | 35.8% |
| Two or more critical violations | 405 | 13.3% |
| Critical item not fixed during the visit | 19 | 0.6% |
Who inspects Nassau County restaurants
The county Department of Health’s Office of Food Protection permits more than 5,700 food-serving establishments, from restaurants and delis to school cafeterias, taverns and mobile units. It applies the State Sanitary Code, Subpart 14-1 and the Nassau County Public Health Ordinance. High-risk establishments must keep a Nassau County certified food manager on staff, and a second one if they are open more than 12 hours straight.
Supermarkets and grocery stores are licensed by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets instead, so they do not show up in the county search. Our guide to New York grocery and bodega inspection records covers those.
The county gives no fixed schedule. Its page says new restaurants and ownership changes are usually inspected in the first few weeks and later frequency depends on the type of operation. In the data, 11.8% of inspected Nassau restaurants had two or more routine inspections in the year; the rest had one.
How to search the Nassau County inspection lookup
- Open the Food Service Establishment Inspections search.
- Find the establishment by name, then confirm the street address, city and ZIP; similar names repeat across hamlets.
- Read Total Critical Violations and Total Non-Critical Violations for each inspection date. The page defines critical violations as conditions that lead to foodborne illness and must be corrected immediately, and non-critical ones as facility design, maintenance and cleanliness issues.
- For the violation codes behind the totals, open the state dataset, filter County to NASSAU and search the facility name.
- For a copy of the report, contact the Health Department or file a Freedom of Information Law request, as the lookup page advises.
The lookup lists restaurants that are currently operating. A place that closed drops out of it; the lookup links to a separate state dataset for closed establishments.
The violations Nassau inspectors write most
Critical items, counted once per routine inspection:
| Item | What it covers | Inspections | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5C | Risky food held at room temperature | 289 | 9.5% |
| 2C | Ready-to-eat food exposed to raw food | 214 | 7.0% |
| 5E | Not enough working refrigeration | 192 | 6.3% |
| 4A | Chemicals stored where they can reach food | 151 | 5.0% |
| 1H | Unapproved-source or spoiled food | 145 | 4.8% |
| 2E | No accurate thermometer in use | 128 | 4.2% |
Non-critical items show up far more often. Handwashing sinks that were blocked, dirty or short of soap or towels (item 12E) were written in 1,366 inspections (44.8%). Food not protected in storage or service (8A) appeared in 1,017 (33.3%), and item 16, which covers missing posters such as the choking-aid poster and training records, in 837 (27.4%).
“Insects, rodents present” (14A) is coded non-critical in New York’s code. Nassau inspectors wrote it in 685 routine inspections (22.5%). Pests count toward the non-critical total, so search the state dataset for item 14A to see them.
Nassau County results by town
Places with at least 60 routine restaurant inspections, sorted by the share with a critical violation:
| Place | Inspections | 1+ critical | 2+ critical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin Square | 73 | 54.8% | 23.3% |
| Valley Stream | 97 | 50.5% | 26.8% |
| Hicksville | 139 | 48.9% | 18.7% |
| Elmont | 96 | 45.8% | 26.0% |
| Garden City | 108 | 45.4% | 21.3% |
| Westbury | 111 | 44.1% | 12.6% |
| Uniondale | 65 | 41.5% | 15.4% |
| New Hyde Park | 68 | 39.7% | 16.2% |
| Freeport | 84 | 35.7% | 9.5% |
| Hempstead | 99 | 34.3% | 10.1% |
| East Meadow | 113 | 31.9% | 10.6% |
| Massapequa | 70 | 31.4% | 8.6% |
| Merrick | 66 | 30.3% | 9.1% |
| Oceanside | 68 | 29.4% | 4.4% |
| Glen Cove | 63 | 28.6% | 7.9% |
| Lynbrook | 86 | 26.7% | 10.5% |
| Great Neck | 65 | 26.2% | 7.7% |
| Rockville Centre | 67 | 25.4% | 4.5% |
| Long Beach | 94 | 23.4% | 2.1% |
| Farmingdale | 67 | 22.4% | 7.5% |
| Levittown | 75 | 21.3% | 9.3% |
| Wantagh | 91 | 20.9% | 2.2% |
Town figures rest on 60 to 139 inspections each, so a handful of visits can move a rate by several points. The place name is the mailing city in the data, which can differ from the incorporated village or town.
What happens after a Nassau critical violation
Nassau usually goes back. 815 of the 1,092 critical inspections (74.6%) have another recorded visit within 60 days, at a median of 14 days, and 80.4% of those visits found no critical violation. Return-visit rates vary widely by health department, from 97.8% in Monroe County to 3.2% in Saratoga County; our New York State inspection results by county compares them.
A critical finding also tends to recur. Looking at pairs of back-to-back routine inspections from October 2024 to September 2026, the second visit found a critical violation again in 48.8% of the 758 pairs that started with one, against 27.0% of the 1,328 pairs that started clean. Critical items on a restaurant’s last two visits are the signal to watch.
How we counted
- Unit: one inspection, meaning one operation ID, date and inspection type, for permits typed Restaurant, Food Service Establishment, Restaurant/Catering Operation or Tavern and inspected by Nassau County. Schools, caterers and institutions are excluded.
- Routine inspections are rows typed “Inspection.” Re-inspections count only as follow-up visits.
- Violation shares count each item once per inspection.
- The data lists currently operating establishments only, so restaurants that closed during the year are missing.
To report a problem, call the Office of Food Protection at 516-227-9717 or email FoodProtection@nassaucountyny.gov with the restaurant’s exact name and address. For Westchester, see our Westchester County inspection results. For Suffolk County, which keeps a separate system, see our Suffolk County inspection records guide. Nassau County Department of Health pages and state dataset checked October 25, 2026.