While this site will not give you the exact details on your favorite downtown restaurant, it can give you an general idea about what kinds of restaurants are most likely to carry violations in the Downtown area. It can even give you an idea of what areas you should try to avoid when you’re looking for a bite to eat. But first, a general introduction to restaurant inspections:
How are Restaurant Inspections Conducted?
From the NYC Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene:
These inspections are unannounced, and are conducted by Public Health Sanitarians who are trained public health professionals with college degrees and backgrounds in the sciences.
During inspections, these Sanitarians spend most of their time evaluating food workers’ practices, including the manner in which they receive and store foods, how they process foods, and the temperatures at which they cook, hold, and reheat foods. (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml#alert)
A Basic Introduction to Health Violation Scores:
(as found on the New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene site)”
How violation points work:
The lower the number of points accrued by a restaurant during an inspection, the better the inspection result.
The Health Department inspects restaurants, and assigns violation points for every violation observed, depending on the severity and extent of the violation. A score of 27 or less is needed for a restaurant to pass the inspection. Restaurants with scores of 28 or more are re-inspected.
But what this site really seeks to explore are these questions–
In Downtown Manhattan–
1. What neigborhood has the most
restaurants that carry violations?
2. What type of restaurant happens to have the
most cases of violations? (Type as related to type
of food served, such as Chinese, French, German,
etc.)
3. Which areas evidence restaurants with the
highest number of violations? (For example, which
areas have clusters of restaurants with high violations?
4. And…do restaurants that are more expensive,
less likely to have health code violations?
