Checking a restaurant's inspection record before you go takes under a minute. Here's how to do it and what to look for.
How to look it up
- Pick the city the restaurant is in (health inspections are run locally).
- Search the restaurant by name.
- Open its record to see the grade or result, the violations, and the inspection history.
What actually matters
- The trend — is the place improving or slipping across inspections?
- Repeat critical or pest violations, which matter more than a single one.
- How recent the latest inspection was.
A single bad inspection isn't the whole story, and a clean record isn't a guarantee. The pattern over time is the most useful signal.
Radius does this for you: it turns the official record into a one-sentence verdict, translates the violations, and shows the trend — for New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago today.