You know, the Department of Health grades for New York City restaurants has been with us for over a year now, and I still don't know how we're supposed measure its success or failure. Let's take Per Se for example. It represents the holy grail of restaurants for many who enjoy fine dining, and like all the NYT four star restaurants, they have a grade of A from the DOH. Here's the thing, the DOH does graded and ungraded inspections from time to time, and they did an ungraded inspection of Per Se in December of 2011, and Per Se, which Sam Sifton called, "The best restaurant in New York City" just four months ago, got a score of 41. For those who count scores at home, anything higher than a score of 28 merits a C grade. They're not alone though.

Everyone's favorite Sichuan take-out restaurant, Szechuan Gourmet actually had a graded score of 68 points on January 12, 2012. What's really interesting is that if you count their last three inspections, 12/14/2011, 1/12/2012, and 1/26/2012, they had scores of 47, 68, and 45 points respectively. Awesome, right?

Awesome point totals aren't just particular to four star restaurants or popular lunch take-out places. Even national chains can rack up the points as well. Let's look at Ruby Tuesdays. On February 1, 2012, they scored 45 points, and then just two weeks later, they scored 24 points the day after Va-LIN-tines day. What does all this mean? I have no fucking idea.

I wish the City would come out with a report to tell us what they think the grading has done for public health. I have no doubt that there's both good and bad to restaurant inspections. No one obviously wants to go to a restaurant that might have mice or roaches. But on the other hand, fine dining establishments that might cook food sous vide might be trouble for weird temperatures. Or places that want to do fresh mozzarella or charcuterie. What I think this really shows us is that Per Se is still packed every night and Szechuan Gourmet is not hurting for lunch special business. Ruby Tuesdya probably packs it in as well too with the tourists.

Even Laduree can't escape getting a score of 31 before finally getting their act together to score a 12 for an A grade. The truth is that since the beginning of 2012, and we're only halfway through February... there has been over 600 restaurants that have gotten a score of 28 and above. Most of those have been ungraded inspections, and that's only counting Manhattan by the way. It would be even more if I counted the other boroughs. Anyway, this was just a quickie post before I get back to talking about Linsanity. Go Knicks!

Posted by Danny on February 17, 2012 at 12:42 pm

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