How to read a Chicago health inspection report

Health inspection reports look intimidating. They're long, they're full of code numbers, and the language is bureaucratic. But once you know what to look for, you can extract the meaningful information from any report in two minutes.

Here's how.

The header

At the top of every report you'll find: - **Restaurant name and address** - **Inspection date** - **Inspection type** (Canvass, Complaint, Re-Inspection, License, etc.) - **Risk level** (1, 2, or 3) - **Result** (Pass, Pass w/ Conditions, Fail)

Skip the rest of the header for now. The result is the headline. The inspection type tells you why the inspector was there.

The violation list

This is the meat. Each violation has three parts: 1. A number (e.g., 38, 22, 5) 2. A short description of the rule 3. A free-text comment from the inspector describing what they actually observed

The number tells you the category. The comment tells you the severity.

A violation 38 with the comment "evidence of insect activity in storage area" is meaningfully different from a violation 38 with "live roaches observed crawling across food prep surfaces." Same number, completely different problem.

What inspectors emphasize in comments

Pay attention to specific phrases:

• **"observed"** — the inspector personally saw it. Higher confidence.
• **"throughout"** — the issue was widespread, not isolated.
• **"approximately X"** — the inspector counted enough to estimate.
• **"too numerous to count"** — bad. Very bad.
• **"actively"** — happening at the time of inspection (e.g., "actively gnawing").
• **"corrected during inspection"** — the operator fixed it on the spot. Less serious than something that wasn't fixable.
• **"discussed with manager"** — informational, mild.
• **"food destroyed"** — the inspector ordered something thrown out.
• **"tagged"** — equipment marked as not usable until repaired.

The priority ranking

Violations roughly fall into three tiers: - **Priority** (numbers 1–28) — direct food safety risks: cooking, holding, cross-contamination, employee health. - **Priority Foundation** (29–48) — practices and conditions that prevent priority violations. - **Core** (49+) — operational and structural items.

A long list of core violations can still result in a Pass. A single priority violation can result in a Fail.

What to look for in 30 seconds

If you only have 30 seconds: 1. Check the **result**. (Pass / Conditional / Fail) 2. Look at the **lowest violation numbers** cited. (Single-digit and 20s are more concerning than 50s.) 3. Read the **inspector comments** on those low-number violations. 4. Check if the next inspection (re-inspection) cleaned them up.

That's most of the signal.

The follow-up matters

A single bad inspection isn't necessarily damning. What matters is what happened next.

• Did the restaurant pass the re-inspection? If yes, they fixed it.
• Did they fail again with the same violations? That's a pattern.
• Did they get hit with the same violations a year later? That's a chronic problem.

We show this on the restaurant detail page on our site by listing inspections in chronological order. You can scan it like a timeline and see whether issues got fixed and stayed fixed, or whether they keep coming back.

What the report doesn't tell you

A few things to remember:

• **Inspections are snapshots.** A restaurant that's clean every other day of the year can have a bad inspection on the worst day. And vice versa.
• **Inspectors vary.** Two different inspectors can document the same kitchen and produce different violation counts. The system tries to standardize this, but human variability is real.
• **Some good behavior isn't documented.** Restaurants doing extensive internal training, daily temp logs, and good staff turnover practices don't get bonus points on the report — they just don't get cited.

The report is a useful, public, *partial* picture. Combined with the right context (history, inspection type, follow-up results), it tells you most of what you need to know.