Chicago's Dirtiest Neighborhoods: Roaches, Rodents & the Cleanest Kitchens

The City of Chicago pays people to walk into restaurants and look under things. Under prep tables. Behind the walk-in cooler where nobody has mopped since the Obama administration. Inside the ceiling tile that doesn't quite sit flush.

Over three years and 54,000+ inspections, this accumulates into a portrait of what is actually happening in Chicago's kitchens. It's not always pretty.

Where Roaches Roam

Chinatown: 96 cockroach citations over three years. Highest in the city. Also one of the densest restaurant corridors in the city — more kitchens per block, more inspections, more chances for a German cockroach behind a steam table to show up in the report.

Rogers Park comes second at 57. Albany Park at 45. The pattern is clear: dense commercial corridors, high restaurant turnover, old buildings with shared walls. A Code 38 in a pre-war building with shared plumbing is as much a building problem as a kitchen problem.

For reference, the median neighborhood gets about 15. Chinatown has six times that.

German cockroaches are the predominant species in urban food service environments. Infestations correlate more strongly with building infrastructure than with sanitation practices alone.

Full roach rankings | What is Code 38?

Rodent Reality

The rodent map looks completely different. Englewood leads with 216 citations — nearly 70 more than second-place Garfield Park at 147. Austin at 137.

The south and west side concentration is hard to miss. These neighborhoods are dealing with vacant lots that serve as rodent habitat, buildings that haven't been updated in decades, and fewer resources for pest control. A droppings citation in Englewood often reflects conditions well beyond any single kitchen's control.

Urban rodent populations are primarily driven by harborage availability and waste management infrastructure, not individual building sanitation.

Full droppings rankings | Rodent evidence violation code

The Cleanest Kitchens

Hyde Park: 72.2% pass rate. Nearly three out of four inspections end clean. City average is around 55%.

Andersonville at 71.8%. Beverly at 70.6%. These are not the trendiest restaurant neighborhoods. They are neighborhoods with good building stock and operators who have been there a while.

Pass rate doesn't track with how expensive the food is. It tracks with how old the building is, how much pest pressure the block has, and whether the operator treats inspections as something that matters.

Full cleanliness rankings

Every restaurant is searchable on Chispections. The full rankings are on the leaderboards page.

The rat map | The cleanest neighborhoods