Where the fails are: a neighborhood scorecard for fall 2026

We tag every inspection with a neighborhood using the city's community area boundaries, plus some hand-drawn lines for the places people actually call by name. Here's what the last 60 days looked like through that lens, using every failed restaurant inspection from late July to late September.

The list

The Loop, 18 fails. The most of any named neighborhood, and not surprising given how densely packed it is. Thirteen distinct restaurants, several with more than one fail in the window. The worst of them scored in the 50s and 60s on our severity scale, which means multiple pest findings in one visit.

Logan Square, 12. Half of these were license inspections, which fail easily and often for reasons that have nothing to do with food. The other half were complaints, and three of those crossed our standout line.

Wicker Park, 8. Four standouts out of eight, which is the highest ratio on the North Side. Division Street accounts for most of them.

West Loop, 8. Three of these were the same restaurant failing three license inspections on the same day, which is a quirk of how the city logs things rather than a sign of a disaster.

Lincoln Park and Lakeview, 7 each. Lakeview's include a ramen shop that failed twice in a week and a brewery. Lincoln Park's include a suspected food poisoning investigation.

Wrigleyville, 6. River North, 7. Hyde Park, 6, with three standouts.

Chinatown, 5. Every single one crossed the standout line. Five for five.

What the numbers don't say

A high count in the Loop mostly means a lot of restaurants. A high standout ratio in a smaller neighborhood, like Chinatown or Wicker Park, is more interesting, because it means the fails that did happen were serious ones.

Also missing: Old Town and Bucktown show zero, and that's partly on us. Until this week the way we drew Old Town was swallowed by Gold Coast, which we've now fixed. Most of Bucktown falls inside the city's Logan Square community area, so some of the Logan Square fails on Armitage and Western are places you'd call Bucktown. That one is still on the list.

Using the neighborhood pages

Every neighborhood on this list has its own page, linked from the footer, showing the current fails with a one-line summary of the worst finding. They update as the city posts new inspections, usually within a day or two of the visit.