Yesterday, it was reported by many (including us) that the city's most popular restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, didn't do so well on their last Heath Department inspection. They scored 35 points for violations like live roaches and flies, which falls in to C grade territory. However, the restaurant wants to stress that they didn't actually receive a C grade, because (as we pointed out yesterday) they have not yet received a second inspection: more ›

Have you ever gone online to check a restaurant's health inspection score before making a reservation? Yeah, us neither. To make that information more transparent, in March, the City Health Department passed a law requiring every NYC restaurant to display a letter grade in their window corresponding with the outcome of a routine health inspection. Restaurant owners and their trade association, NYSRA, have voiced their concern that the letter grades—A denoting sanitary conditions, B for passing but less sanitary and C for really, really gross but given 30 days to shape up—will be "unfair and a black eye to this industry in the restaurant capital of the word." With the July start-date for the letter grades looming, we asked Sarah Klein, food-safety attorney for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), to answer our questions. more ›

The New York City Health Department is way behind on its annual inspections, according to a report published in today's Post. The agency has admitted that 20 percent of restaurants have not been checked in on over the last year and a half. That means that around 5,000 eateries haven't been visited by a health inspector in 2008. One Brooklyn burger restaurant owner tells the paper, "We are all on pins and needles." His place hasn't been inspected since last spring. The Health Department says they will be working overtime in their attempt to get all 25,000-plus restaurants checked in on by mid-2009. Maybe they're still feeling the after effects of being overwhelmed by the Tomato Craze of this past spring. more ›