New York City Restaurant Inspection Violations and Grades

Records from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) contain every sustained or not-yet-adjudicated violation citation from full or special program inspections for active restaurants and college cafeterias. The dataset includes establishments that have applied for permits but not yet been inspected, with data compiled from several administrative systems and last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing trends in food safety violations by CUISINE DESCRIPTION, BORO, and INSPECTION DATE.
• Predicting inspection SCORE or GRADE based on historical VIOLATION DESCRIPTION and CRITICAL FLAG data.
• Mapping restaurant hygiene using Location coordinates (Latitude, Longitude) and ZIPCODE for spatial analysis.
• Assessing the outcomes of different INSPECTION TYPE actions through the ACTION and GRADE DATE fields.

Strengths

• Includes records for inspections with no violations, providing a complete view of inspection activity.
• Contains detailed violation information with specific fields like VIOLATION DESCRIPTION, CRITICAL FLAG, and SCORE.
• Geographic granularity is supported with columns for coordinates, BORO, ZIPCODE, and Community Districts.

Limitations

• Contains acknowledged data entry or transfer errors, leading to some illogical values and missing data.
• Limited to restaurants in an active status, excluding establishments that have gone out of business.
• The inspection date of 1/1/1900 is used as a placeholder for new, uninspected establishments, which may complicate temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)

Collection Method

Compiled from several large administrative data systems tracking restaurant inspections and violations.

Time Range

Inspections up to three years prior to the most recent inspection for active establishments.

Freshness

2026-03-22

Geography

New York City, New York, United States.