How restaurant inspections work in New York
Who inspects New York's restaurants, how results are graded, and how to read them on CleanPlate.
New York runs two very different inspection worlds: New York City's famous letter-grade system, and the state Health Department system covering everywhere else. CleanPlate carries both — the five boroughs plus more than fifty upstate and suburban jurisdictions.
Who does the inspecting
Inside the five boroughs, the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene inspects every food-service establishment. Outside the city, county health departments inspect under New York State Department of Health oversight, and their results flow into a single statewide dataset — which is how CleanPlate covers everywhere from Buffalo's neighbors to the Adirondacks. (Erie and Suffolk counties run independent systems that don't publish to the state feed.)
How results are graded
NYC uses the A/B/C letter grades posted in restaurant windows: violations carry point values, and the point total maps to the letter. Upstate, the state system doesn't issue grades — inspections record violations flagged as critical or non-critical. CleanPlate derives a pass/fail-style status from those flags (a visit with critical violations never profiles as a clean pass) and labels it as derived.
The practical effect: an NYC page shows an official letter; an upstate page shows a derived status plus the violation detail behind it.
Reading it on CleanPlate
Every New York restaurant page on CleanPlate shows the establishment's current standing, its full inspection history with dates, and a link to the official agency behind the record. Grades are shown exactly as reported; where the source publishes no summary grade, the derived status is labeled as derived. Establishments with no inspection in over two years are treated as likely closed and excluded from search.