Insights

Things the inspection record says that the letter in the window does not.

• The thirteen point cliff

  A single point separates a clean A grade from an official re-inspection and a fine. The data shows how thousands of restaurant scores cluster right at that exact cutoff line.

• The year-long A

  An "A" placard in the window does not mean a restaurant passed its last inspection. We looked at how long bad inspection results take to actually show up on the street.

• Inspection history the city stopped publishing

  Landmark restaurants like Katz's have over a century of history, but the city only publishes the last three years of it. Here is how we recovered nearly a decade of dropped health inspection records.