What our A–F Chicago restaurant grades mean
Chicago’s inspection records don’t come with a letter grade. Chicago Restaurants: Ranked adds one: a 0–100 score and an A–F grade calculated from the City’s records. Here is exactly how, and what a grade can’t tell you.
Updated 26 September 2026
This is our grade, not the City’s. The City of Chicago records each inspection as pass, pass with conditions or fail (what those mean). The score and letter are calculated by this app from those public records, the same way for every place. They are not issued or endorsed by the City of Chicago or its Department of Public Health.
Which inspections count
Every inspection since January 1, 2023 that ended in pass, pass with conditions or fail. Visits recorded as Out of Business, No Entry, Not Ready or Business Not Located don’t count, because nothing was graded.
What lowers the score
Each place starts at 100. Points come off for six things in its record:
| Factor | How it is measured | Most points off |
|---|---|---|
| Failed inspections | Share of inspections that failed | 40 |
| All violations | 3 points per violation per visit, on average, counting up to 10 | 30 |
| Pest citations | Share of inspections citing item 38, “Insects, rodents, & animals not present” | 25 |
| Serious food-safety violations | 8 points per violation per visit from items 1 to 29 on the City’s report, on average, counting up to 3 | 24 |
| Last visit failed | The most recent inspection was a fail | 8 |
| Passes with conditions | Share of inspections that passed with conditions | 6 |
Items 1 to 29 on the City’s current report cover things like a certified food manager on site, handwashing, safe food sources, cooking and holding temperatures, date marking and toxic chemicals. The score can’t go below 0.
Few inspections? Pulled toward the average
A place with one or two inspections can look perfect or terrible by luck. So each score is blended with the city average, as if every place also had two average inspections: (inspections × its own score + 2 × city average) ÷ (inspections + 2). With one inspection, a place’s own record is a third of its score. With ten, it is five-sixths.
From score to letter
| Grade | Score | Extra rule |
|---|---|---|
| A | 75–100 | No failed inspections since 2023; otherwise B at best |
| B | 66–74 | |
| C | 57–65 | |
| D | 47–56 | |
| F | 0–46 | At least one failed inspection or pest citation; otherwise D |
A place with no qualifying inspection since January 2023 gets no grade. The Cleanest and Lowest inspection scores boards include only places with at least two inspections, so a single visit can’t put a place at the top or the bottom.
What a grade can’t tell you
- It is a summary of the past. Inspections are snapshots of what the inspector found on the day. A grade is not a prediction and not a food safety certificate.
- It says nothing about taste, price or service. It only reflects inspection records.
- Each location stands alone. Two branches of the same chain can have very different grades.
- It changes as records change. A new passing inspection lifts a score once it is in the City’s data and in an app update.
To check the underlying records, every place page in the app links to the City’s official inspection records, or you can look a place up on the City’s data portal yourself. If a place is matched to the wrong records, please email work-with-nick@gmail.com.
See every grade on a map
Chicago Restaurants: Ranked is a free iPhone and iPad app with our A–F grades for 7,600+ Chicago restaurants, rankings by inspection score, and a map with grade-colored pins. No ads, no account.