More NYC restaurants make the grade with A ratings

About 85 percent of the 23,975 New York City restaurants inspected by the health department received A grades as of Nov. 2, a 20 percent increase in perfect scores from the months after the program started in 2010, according to city data.

The good grades are spread out among the boroughs, with western midtown and Hell's Kitchen taking the top honors with 583 As.

There were only 385 C grades, about 1.6 percent, but those marks were scattered throughout ZIP codes. The Lower East Side had the highest concentration of Cs with 14 in the 10002 ZIP code.

Daniel Kass, the deputy commissioner for environmental health, said the increase in A grades is proof the system works.

"The public wants the best. Restaurants know this and grading has enabled and forced some restaurants to step up their game," Kass said.

Restaurant and business associations agreed that the grading system is successful, though they say some tweaks are still required.

"There is a cultural and linguistic barrier for some of the owners," said Wellington Chen, the executive director of the Chinatown Partnership. "There is a certain way of serving a food and that goes against the current practice of New York City guidelines. The owners need better education on it."

When a restaurant opens, the health department conducts an initial inspection and looks for various violations, such as unclean utensils or pests in the kitchen. The violations are tallied in a point system: 0 to 13 points results in an A grade, 14 to 27 points earn an eatery a B and 28 or more gets a C.

If a restaurant doesn't get an A at the first inspection, the score is ungraded and the owners have a chance to rectify things before a second inspection about a month later. If the restaurant gets a B or C rating during that unannounced health department visit, it can choose to display the second result or post a "grade pending" poster while it fixes the violation or contests the ruling.

City Councilman Corey Johnson, who chairs the health committee and represents Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, said the report card grade is a key in determining an eatery's success. "Psychologically, it impacts whether a consumer eats in a restaurant or not, so people want to have that A grade," he said.

City Councilman Danny Dromm, who represents the neighborhood with the most grade-pending scores, Jackson Heights, said that some foodies are savvy enough to put a low grade or grade pending notice in context.

"That can happen anywhere," he said of the minor violations that can collectively lead to one of those results. "The question is, 'Is it taken care of?' In most instances they are willing to rectify it and the customers understand."