Chicago's inspection system compared to other major cities

If you've eaten in New York, you've seen those big "A" or "B" letter grades posted in restaurant windows. LA uses color-coded placards on the door. San Francisco posts a numerical score. Chicago does... none of those things. So how does Chicago's system actually compare?

What other cities do

**New York City:** Letter grades — A (0–13 points), B (14–27 points), C (28+ points). Posted in the window where customers can see it. The lower the score, the better. A "C" grade is a real reputational hit and most restaurants will close to fix things rather than display one.

**Los Angeles:** A 100-point inspection scoring system, displayed as a colored placard on the door — green ("A," 90–100), yellow ("B," 80–89), red ("C," 70–79). Below 70 = closed.

**San Francisco:** Numeric scores out of 100, posted publicly online but not required to be displayed in the restaurant.

**Seattle:** Numeric scoring with results published online. Strong open data culture, but no posted placards.

**Chicago:** Pass / Pass with Conditions / Fail. Reports are public via the city's open data portal. No placards. No grades. No scores in any standardized form.

Chicago's approach in plain English

Chicago favors a binary-ish outcome system. You either Pass, Pass with Conditions, or Fail — and that's the headline. The detailed violation list lives in the report. The restaurant doesn't have to display anything in their window.

For better or worse, this puts the burden on the diner. You have to actively look up a place — through the city's portal, our site, or another aggregator — to see how they did. There's no glance-at-the-window verdict.

What's good about Chicago's system

• **Cleaner data.** Chicago publishes all inspection data through its open data portal, refreshed daily. The data is clean, machine-readable, and includes the full violation comments. New York's data is also good; LA's is a little harder to get to. Chicago's is genuinely strong.
• **Less gaming.** New York's letter grade system has been criticized for incentivizing "grade-targeting" behavior — restaurants doing just enough to get an A. Chicago's binary outcome system is harder to game in that way.
• **Detailed reports.** Chicago's reports include free-text comments from the inspector. NYC's grade tells you a tier; Chicago's report tells you the story. The former is faster to glance at; the latter has more signal.

What's not good

• **Discoverability.** If you're standing on the sidewalk deciding where to eat, Chicago gives you nothing. NYC's letter grade is right there. LA's color is visible. You'd have to pull out your phone to find Chicago's data — assuming you know where to look.
• **No public-facing accountability.** Restaurants in Chicago can fail an inspection and the public doesn't really know unless a journalist or aggregator surfaces it. We try to fix this, but it's still a gap.
• **No direct comparison.** "Pass with Conditions" tells you the outcome, not the magnitude. A restaurant cited for one minor temp issue and one cited for ten different problems can both end up in the same bucket. New York's point system at least quantifies it.

What's better, what's worse

It depends on what you value. If you want quick public-facing accountability — NYC's system probably wins. Posting a grade in the window changes restaurant behavior in measurable ways.

If you want detailed, public, machine-readable inspection data — Chicago is among the best in the country. The depth of what's available is impressive.

The catch is that Chicago's data is great *if you know to look for it*. Most diners don't. Which is why sites like ours exist — to bridge the gap between "the city has the data" and "the public can use it."

A modest proposal

Plenty of people have proposed adopting NYC-style grades in Chicago. There are pros and cons, and the restaurant industry has historically pushed back on display-required grading. We don't take a position one way or another — but we do think the gap between "data exists" and "diners can use it" is real, and shrinking it is the whole point of what we do.