In New York, part of a restaurant’s success lies with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOH), known for its scrupulous requirements, with infractions having the power to make or break a business financially. Restaurants that don’t get an “A” grade are left in limbo, waiting for the agency to send an inspector after they’ve fixed the issues. But staff cuts across city agencies are hitting restaurants hard, with many having to wait over a year for reinspections when it used to be just a couple of months, according to sources. And there’s currently nothing they can do about it.

In the meantime, some dinged restaurants – such as ice cream shop Van Leeuwen’s Spring Street location, Max Brenner, City Winery, and, as Eater reported last May, Gallaghers Steakhouse — have “C”-grades that they’re either obscuring, or they’re posting old grades, according to New York Post, in violation of the city’s instructions as to where and how grades must be publicly posted.

Van Leuween in Nolita “artfully obscured their ‘C,’” according to the Post, while in Union Square, Max Brenner got a “C” in 2024 and was recently cited for not posting its grade. City Winery’s Pier 57 location also has a “C” online but displayed a “Grade Pending” sign. CEO Michael Dorf says it earned nine points a year ago, qualifying for a “B,” yet the “C” from August 2023 remains unchanged.

According to the city’s 2016 guide for food service operators, “restaurants with ‘A’ grades are inspected less often than those with ‘Bs’ or ‘Cs’, giving them more opportunities to improve their grades.” A score of 0-13 results in a grade of “A;” 14-27 points, a “B;” and 28 or more points, a “C.” Currently, the DOH is focused on turnarounds for regrades on restaurants that have had to close due to a failed inspection, a spokesperson says.

The biggest problem regarding lag times is that there are “far fewer” inspectors than the 100 or so employees from pre-pandemic, a DOH spokesperson said this week. (That number was already a challenge, with more than 48,000 restaurants in New York City, according to Google Map data.) All city agencies are having to navigate cuts, a spokesperson told Eater.

Last year’s DOH budget was cut by over $700 million from 2023, according to records. The spokesperson didn’t specify how many inspectors are currently employed with the DOH and how many they’re actively recruiting for a salary of $49,961 a year to $51,460, according to the city’s job postings. Last fall, Grub Street reported on an exodus of DOH staffers post-pandemic.

The most infamous case of a delayed reinspection is Theater District staple Gallaghers, which was the subject of a Reddit thread last spring over the restaurant apparently misrepresenting its letter grade.

Gallaghers is listed as getting a “C” as of May 2023, attributing reasons like “food contact surface not properly washed,” some of the 56 points in violations. (The restaurant still had an “A” in the window that they said was the result of the inspector forgetting to change it). After Eater’s article last year, DOH visited the restaurant the Monday following the news stories, and they swapped out the “A” for a “C” in the window. “Although this was a non-graded inspection, it will be followed by a full reinspection, which will determine our next grade,” an agency spokesperson said at the time.

That was nine months ago. A DOH spokesperson says this week they don’t know when Gallaghers will get that reinspection visit.

There wasn’t always such a lag in the process that is now causing handwringing for businesses and would-be customers of dinged restaurants. When grades were implemented back during the Bloomberg administration in 2010, “restaurants were assured that they would not have to wait,” Mark Nealon tells Eater this week. The food safety and sanitation consultant had been an inspector for the city’s DOH for three years before segueing to advising restaurants.

When restaurants got a bad grade, “you’d be reinspected within three to four months. If you got an okay grade, it was five to six months. And if you got an ‘A,’ it was every 12 months. All that has gone out the window,” he says. And in the case of restaurants like Gallaghers and City Winery, “there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“The system is broken,” said Nealon. ”But the public loves it — even though they do not know what it means.”

Today, Nealon says, “You can have two live rats in your kitchen and still get an ‘A’; and the place across the street has a refrigerator temperature that’s a couple of degrees off, a light bulb that’s not working, and some broken tiles, and you get a ‘B.’” (Two live rats with approximately less than 30 droppings is 5-point violation; an “A” grade is 1 to 13 points of violation.)

New York diners do look to restaurant health grades to determine whether they’re going to eat at businesses. “If there’s a low health grade, I won’t risk the rest of my day, week, or month to try the food,” says Queens resident Jan Lei.

“We just want the Department of Health to operate efficiently. When you’re an establishment that … really plays by the rules and tries to go above the call of duty, you should be rewarded for good behavior, right?” says Dorf. “So to have to wait so long, it gets a little frustrating.”