NYC Restaurant Inspections

Which Borough and Cuisine gets the MOST Critically-flagged Restaurant Code Violations?

(An Analysis of Restaurant Inspections Occurring from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019)

If you have ever wandered which NYC borough receives the most inspections and which types of restaurants to steer clear from based on the number of inspections? Then you must read this report.

This analysis attempts to drill down the NYC Open Data of restaurant inspections from NYC Department of Health and Mental Health over the past year, 10/2018-9/2019.

We began with extracting the “critically-flagged” inspections from the data and then quantifying the number of those inspection results per borough.

Graph 1

Graph 2

Disclaimer: Unfortunately I was unable to obtain the number of existing restaurants per borough. Ideally it will be more valuable information to compare the percentage of restaurants with critically-flagged violations per borough. (critically-flagged restaurants / total restaurants) I tried to attempt normalizing based on population which shows in the graph that indicates violations per capita.

Manhattan Identified as Borough with Most Critically-flagged Restaurant Inspections

Now that Manhattan has been identified as the borough with the most critically-flagged inspection results, let’s now find out what are the top 5 critically-flagged inspection violations in the borough.

Taking the data of citywide critically-flagged inspection results, we extracted the data that applies to Manhattan only. Once that data is comprised, we quantify and identify the top 5 violations in Manhattan.

Graph 3

Violation Code Descriptions

  1. 06D - Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred
  2. 04L - Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas
  3. 02G - Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38º F) except during necessary preparation
  4. 06C - Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service
  5. 04N - Filth flies or food/refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies

Which Cuisine is Ranked Highest Amongst the Top 5 Critically-flagged Restaurant Inspection Results in Manhattan?

After identifying the Top 5 inspection code violations that are critically-flagged in Manhattan, we now can decipher which restaurant cuisine has the most code violations amongst the Top 5.

Using the variable within the data “cuisine_description” we can quantify and rank the restaurant cuisines, then extrapolate the Top 5 cuisines amongst the Top 5 critically-flagged inspection code violations.

Graph 4

It appears that American Cuisine Restaurants in Manhattan are ranked at the top as the cuisine with the most critically-flagged restaurant inspection results throughout NYC. Also, Manhattan is the borough with the most critically-flagged restaurant inspection results in numbers compared to other boroughs.

An interesting revelation is how high cafes/coffee/tea establishments are ranked in Manhattan.

As mentioned above, without normalizing the data with an overall count of restaurants throughout NYC, undoubtedly Manhattan will outweigh the other boroughs in magnitude of restaurants. Without that set of data, this analysis has constraints that may not show the official magnitude of restaurant inspections by borough.