I ranked Chicago’s worst kitchens using 8 years of city health inspection data
compiled records from July 2018 through 2026.
I put together a ranking of Chicago restaurants based on their total critical health violations.
A few quick notes on the data:
Priority Violations: This strictly counts CDPH’s highest-risk citations (gross food storage temps, pests, cross-contamination, lack of hot water, etc.).
Timeframes: Slide 1 shows total violations over the last 8 years. Slide 2 isolates the past 12 months.
Shared Business Licenses: Multi-location entities using a single master license in city records (like United Club at O'Hare) show aggregated totals across all their outposts.
Inspection Frequency: Older and higher-volume establishments get audited far more often, so raw totals naturally lean toward longer-standing spots.
You can see full ranking here : https://chispections.com
Source: (Chicago Health Department) data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Food-Inspections/4ijn-s7e5