Every restaurant in New York City has a letter in its window, and most people read it in half a second: A is fine, anything else is a question. The letter is the end of a fairly precise process, though, and knowing how it is scored changes what it tells you. We put every graded food business in the city on one map, from the city’s own data, and this is what is behind the letters on it.
The letters at a glance:
- A: 0 to 13 points on the inspection
- B: 14 to 27 points
- C: 28 points or more
- N: not yet graded
- Z: grade pending, while a B or C is contested
- P: grade pending after the city re-opened a business it closed
How a grade is scored
The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) inspects restaurants without warning. The inspector scores every violation found in points, and the grade comes from the total:
- A: 0 to 13 points
- B: 14 to 27 points
- C: 28 points or more
Fewer points is better. A score is not a count of problems: a serious violation, one that could make somebody ill, carries more points than a minor one, so a single bad finding can cost more than several small ones.
A restaurant that scores an A on its first inspection is graded there and then. One that does not is inspected again, and the grade is issued after that re-inspection. That second visit is the restaurant’s chance to fix what was found.
N, Z and P are not grades
Three other letters turn up in the city’s data, and none of them is a step below C.
- N means not yet graded.
- Z means grade pending. A restaurant that receives a B or a C can contest it at a hearing, and while it does it can post a Grade Pending card instead of the letter.
- P means grade pending after a re-opening: the city closed the business, and it has re-opened but has not been graded since.
On the map these are drawn in greys rather than on the green-to-red scale, because they say a grade is not settled yet, which is a different thing from a bad one.
How many restaurants have an A
Most of them. In the snapshot taken on 8 October 2026, 14,491 of the 18,116 graded food businesses in the city held an A, about four in five. 1,916 held a B and 888 a C, and the rest had a grade pending.
That split is worth keeping in mind when you read a B. It is not a failing grade, but it is a minority one.
Why a grade can be years old
Each business carries the newest grade it holds and the day that grade was issued. Not every inspection issues a grade, so a restaurant can have been visited several times since its letter was set. An old date means no grade has been issued since, not that nobody has been to look.
This is the part of the data that surprises people most. On the map, every business’s card lists the inspections the city’s export still holds, and the one that set the grade is marked, so you can see the letter in its window next to the visits that came after it.
Closures are a record, not a status
The city can close a food business it finds to be a public health hazard. 782 of the businesses in the snapshot have been closed at least once in the city’s data. Most have re-opened since, which is why the map’s layer is labelled “closed by the city at some point”. It is a record of what happened, not a list of places that are shut today.
Pests on the latest inspection
The city cites four pests by species: rats, mice, roaches and flies. The map shows what each business’s latest inspection cited, so it reflects the most recent visit and nothing older. A citation is what an inspector recorded on that day, and the timeline on each card shows the dates.
What the map does not do
It does not rank anything. Grade shares do differ between cuisines and neighbourhoods, but they are driven by how much kitchen a place has as much as by how careful it is: a doughnut counter and a full-service kitchen handling raw meat are not inspected for the same risks. A league table of cuisines by hygiene would say more than the data does, so the map lets you filter by cuisine and leaves the comparison to you.
It is also not the city’s official record. It is a snapshot of the city’s open data, drawn by us and not reviewed by DOHMH. For anything that matters, the source dataset is the record.
If you run a restaurant
Your grade is the first review most passers-by read, and it is one you cannot answer. The reviews you can answer are on Google, and they do a similar job for people deciding where to eat. If you have good ones, they are worth showing where your customers already look. See how to respond to Google reviews and Instagram marketing ideas for restaurants.