THE CITY SHUT THEM DOWN AND THE INSPECTION RECORDS SHOW EXACTLY WHAT INSPECTORS FOUND

Between September 25 and October 2, the New York City Department of Health ordered a round of restaurant closures. Inspectors walked into kitchens in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, wrote up what they found, and shut the doors.

The orders are public. So are the reasons. The closure list for that week names the locations and the violations that triggered each shutdown, which gives anyone eating out in this city a way to check before they sit down. The city shut them down. The record says why.

The Health Department uses a letter-grade system. Inspectors arrive unannounced and add points for every violation they find. Zero to 13 points is an A, 14 to 27 is a B, and 28 or more is a C. A general violation starts at two points, a critical one at five, and a public health hazard at seven.

A closure is a different event from a bad grade. It comes when an inspector finds a critical problem, think vermin, a temperature failure or a contamination risk, serious enough to be a public health hazard that cannot be corrected before the inspection ends. At that point the department can order the restaurant closed on the spot and keep it closed until the problem is fixed.

Getting back open takes another visit. The operator has to correct the conditions and pass a reinspection, which the city calls a reopening inspection, before serving again. That visit is scored, but it does not produce a new letter grade.

The detail of all this lives in the inspection report. The public never sees the inside report unless they look it up.

Patch runs a closure list every week, built from Health Department inspection records. Its list covering September 25 through October 2 names the specific restaurants ordered shut across New York City, with the address, the violation points and the violations as inspectors wrote them. It ran on Friday, October 2, with eight restaurants on it.

Reading an entry is simple once you know the parts. The points are the inspection score, where lower is better. The violations appear in the Health Department's own wording, from live roaches to food held at the wrong temperature. The closure itself traces to a hazard that could not be fixed while the inspector was in the room.

The city's own inspection file kept moving after that. As of its October 5 update it showed 13 new closure orders dated inside the same week. The list is the shortcut. The record underneath it is the source, and both are free.

Of the 13 closures on the city's record, five were in Brooklyn, three in Queens, three in the Bronx and two in Manhattan. Twelve of the 13 inspections cited pests: live roaches at seven restaurants, evidence of mice at seven, flies at seven. The one exception was cited for sewage or liquid waste in a work area and a hand-washing violation. Five were written up for hot food held below 140 degrees and three for cold food held above 41. Seven were also cited for having no pest management contract or no extermination records on site.

The scores ran from 42 to 128 points, and the middle score was 58. A C starts at 28, so the typical restaurant on this list scored more than double the threshold for the lowest letter the city gives.

A closure order is not the end for these rooms. Thirteen restaurants were cleared to reopen during the same week. The fastest were back in three days. One took 26. Three of the 13 that were closed that week had already passed a reopening inspection by October 2. Reopening is not automatic, though. Nine restaurants failed a reopening inspection during the week, most of them over live roaches, and stayed closed longer.

A letter grade in a window reflects the last completed inspection cycle. It does not reflect what inspectors found last Tuesday. A restaurant can be closed and reopened between grade postings, because the inspection that reopens it is not a graded one.

That week's record shows how wide the gap runs. For six of the 13 restaurants ordered closed, the last letter grade the city had issued was an A. Those grades were between 11 and 27 months old. Ten of the 13 restaurants cleared to reopen went back on the record as Grade Pending.

The gap between the letter and the latest visit is where diners get surprised.

The closure list and the inspection portal fill that gap. The list tells you who was shut this week. The portal, which the Health Department calls ABCEats, covers restaurants in all five boroughs. Search a name and it shows each inspection, the date, the score and every violation cited.

Three things are worth reading on any record. The date of the last inspection. Whether the same violation shows up visit after visit. And whether the place has been closed and reopened since the letter in the window was issued.

Check both before a reservation. Read the date of the last inspection before you read the letter, then read what the inspector wrote. The letter is a summary. The record is the full account, and it is open to anyone who looks.