To check a New York City restaurant’s grade, open ABCEats, NYC Health’s restaurant inspection lookup, search by name or address, and match the exact address, not just a familiar restaurant name. Open the inspection history behind the letter grade: the points, dated violations and later inspection can tell different parts of the story.
NYC uses violation points: fewer points are better. In the official grading scale, A is 0–13 points, B is 14–27, and C is 28 or more. These are not customer-review stars or a percentage score. Read any pending or other posted status as shown; do not invent a letter when the current record does not supply one.
NYC Health pages and the ABCEats lookup checked October 24, 2026.
Find the licensed facility for NYC restaurant grades
Search ABCEats for the licensed facility. Match the street address before reading the newest inspection, rating, or permit status.
Use the address and facility number to avoid a false match
Keep the facility’s legal or trading name, exact address, license number, jurisdiction, and relevant date range.
- Facility name
- Street address
- License or facility number
- Inspection jurisdiction
Read the inspection and follow-up together
- Find the facility in NYC Health Restaurant Grades by address as well as name.
- Open the dated record and identify the type of inspection or rating event.
- Read the violations, severity, corrective action, and any closure or permit consequence behind the headline result.
- Check later visits to distinguish a corrected historical issue from a current unresolved condition.
- Record the facility identifier and inspection dates behind your conclusion.
A grade is only the headline of a dated visit
A sound result ties the correct facility to a dated inspection and its follow-up; the score or grade alone is incomplete.
| What you find | What to check before using it |
|---|---|
| A: 0–13 points | Read the inspection date and findings. An A is not a guarantee about conditions at your visit. |
| B: 14–27 points / C: 28 or more | Open the violations and follow-up. The point total is not the number of violations. |
| A pending or other non-letter status | Read the official explanation and dated history; do not convert it into A, B or C. |
| An older poor result followed by a later visit | Keep the events in order. Do not present an old finding as an unresolved current condition without the later record. |
A grade summarizes one dated inspection. Read the visit type and findings together before using it to judge current conditions.
Why many inspections have a score but no grade
NYC Health’s How We Score and Grade guide, dated March 2012 and still linked from the city’s grading page in October 2026, explains that only two kinds of inspection produce a letter: an initial inspection that earns an A, and a reinspection, which is graded A, B or C. A restaurant gets two chances at an A in each inspection cycle. If the initial inspection scores 14 points or more, it is scored but not graded, and an inspector returns unannounced, typically within a month, for the graded reinspection.
That explains three things you will see in the history:
- A score with no letter. Initial inspections of 14 points or more, monitoring visits after a very poor reinspection, inspections of restaurants not yet open or seeking to reopen after a closure, and some complaint inspections are all scored but ungraded.
- Grade Pending. After a B or C on reinspection, the restaurant receives both a grade card and a Grade Pending card and may post either until it has a hearing at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) Health Tribunal. So a Grade Pending sign means the reinspection produced a B or C that is still open to a hearing. Our count of NYC restaurants showing Grade Pending shows how long that status usually lasts. It is not an A.
- Not Yet Graded. A restaurant with no graded inspection yet is listed this way on the city site.
Points also carry weight you can read. The same guide says a public health hazard, such as food held at the wrong temperature, carries at least 7 points and can lead to closure if it can’t be fixed before the inspection ends. A critical violation carries at least 5 points and a general violation at least 2, with more added for how extensive the problem is. A 12-point A can therefore include one public health hazard. For hearings and complaint routes, see our guide to NYC complaint, Ombuds and OATH records.
What a year of NYC inspections shows about the letter in the window
We pulled every routine (“cycle”) inspection the NYC Health Department recorded from October 1, 2025 through the latest update (NYC Open Data, DOHMH Restaurant Inspection Results, pulled October 23, 2026). That covers about 22,000 inspections at 17,587 restaurants. The figures below are our own count from those records, using the city’s grade cutoffs: 0–13 points is an A, 14–27 a B, 28 or more a C.
| Inspection | Count | Scored in A range (0–13) | B range (14–27) | C range (28+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First visit of the cycle (initial) | 16,914 | 60% | 22% | 19% |
| Return visit (re-inspection) | 5,076 | 62% | 25% | 13% |
- Four in ten restaurants missed an A on the first visit. In NYC a first inspection that scores 14 or more does not get a letter; the restaurant is re-inspected and graded then. Of 6,845 first visits that scored 14 or more, 3,452 already had a re-inspection, and 61% of those came back in the A range. An A on the door is often the result of the second visit, so the full history tells you more than the letter.
- The gap between visits is not short. The median time from a failed first visit to its re-inspection was 66 days, and a quarter took 186 days or longer. That gap is how far the letter on the door can lag behind the latest inspection, which is why the dated record matters more than the card.
- Temperature and pests lead the critical list. The most-cited critical violations were cold food held above 41°F (5,752 citations), food not protected from contamination (5,445), food-contact surfaces not sanitized (5,358), hot food below 140°F (4,452), and evidence of mice (3,645, roughly one in six routine inspections).
When the Health Department closes a restaurant, the median NYC reopening came 6 days later; see how long restaurant closures last.
Limits: about half of the failed first visits had no re-inspection in the data yet, so the 61% figure covers only completed pairs. Scores are counted per inspection date; restaurants that contested a score at a hearing may show a different final grade on the city’s site.
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.
For the same data broken down by borough and cuisine, and for how old the posted letters are, see NYC restaurant grades by borough and cuisine.
If a restaurant’s history shows “Establishment Closed by DOHMH,” our analysis of a year of NYC closures shows the violations behind them and how long closures usually last.
When the restaurant name returns no exact match
If the name returns no match, search the street address and check the borough and business-name spelling. A renamed business or another branch can produce a misleading match. If the identity or current status is still unclear, use the contact route on the NYC Health inspection page; absence from your search is not a clean inspection result.