Bayou Eats guide · public records
Checking a Louisiana restaurant inspection
The Louisiana Department of Health inspects retail food establishments in all 64 parishes, New Orleans included. Its reports are public, but they aren't published as data, and they carry no score, grade or placard: they list critical and non-critical violations, marked corrected or repeat.
Reading a report
Inspections follow the state's retail food rules (the Louisiana Sanitary Code). A report lists each violation, critical or non-critical, and notes whether it was corrected on site or is a repeat. There's no official score to compare, and none here.
Bayou Eats shows no inspection results and computes no grade of its own. The search is for looking places up one at a time and offers no download, so we link it rather than copy it. One inspection is a snapshot of one day.
What Bayou Eats does show
Every place in the app and on the web search links to the state's inspection search. In New Orleans and East Baton Rouge we also show the city's or parish's own license records, and in New Orleans whether a place holds an alcohol permit for a restaurant or bar. The rest is hand-checked research and honors from the MICHELIN Guide and the James Beard Foundation.
Other guides: Po-boys, Old-line Creole dining rooms, Boudin & cracklins, Oyster bars & boiled seafood, Beignets & sweets, MICHELIN & James Beard.