How to Read a Chicago Health Inspection Report

Every restaurant inspection in Chicago produces a public report. The city uploads it to a database anyone can search. You'd think this would be useful. It is not. The reports read like they were written by bureaucrats for other bureaucrats — because they were.

Here's an actual entry: "36. THERMOMETERS PROVIDED & CONSPICUOUS - Comments: MUST PROVIDE THERMOMETERS IN ALL COOLERS." Great. Thanks.

The Three Results

**Pass** means nothing critical turned up, or whatever was wrong got fixed while the inspector stood there watching. About 51% of inspections end here. Majority rules.

**Fail** means the inspector found something bad enough that it can't be fixed on the spot. You'd assume this means the restaurant closes. It usually doesn't. More on that later. Roughly 19% of inspections.

**Pass with Conditions** is the interesting one. Violations serious enough to document, not severe enough to fail. Fifteen percent of all inspections. A restaurant can rack up conditional passes for the same violation for years and nothing escalates. The system has a gap and it lives right here.

The FDA estimates that foodborne illness affects 48 million Americans annually. Inspection systems are the primary line of defense.

What 'Pass with Conditions' actually means | Search any restaurant's inspection history

The Violation Codes

There are 45 active codes. Most of them don't matter much. Here are the ones that do:

**Temperature violations (Codes 21-24, 31-32).** This is the big one. Food sitting at the wrong temperature is how people get sick. Not theoretically — actually. The CDC traces more restaurant outbreaks to temperature abuse than to any other single factor.

**Pest violations (Codes 33, 38).** A single mouse dropping and a full-blown infestation both get the same code. The difference is in the comments — which nobody reads unless you know to look. We built a whole dictionary for this.

**Sanitation violations (Codes 34-37, 41).** Dirty surfaces, wrong cleaning chemicals. These show up constantly because they're the easiest things to get wrong during a Friday night rush. Common but rarely dangerous on their own.

**Structural stuff (Codes 39-45).** Bad plumbing, broken ventilation. Usually means the building is old, not that the operator is negligent. Chicago has a lot of old buildings.

Temperature abuse is the number one contributing factor to foodborne illness outbreaks associated with restaurants.

Complete violation dictionary | Roach violations (Code 38)

The Comments Are the Report

Two restaurants both get a Code 38. One because an inspector saw a fruit fly near a floor drain. The other because there were roach egg casings in the food prep area. Same code. Not the same restaurant. Not the same problem.

The violation code is the category. The comments section is where the actual story lives. And almost nobody reads it because the formatting is horrible and you have to know what you're looking at.

That's what this site is for.

The narrative section of an inspection report provides context that coded violations alone cannot convey.

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