Uptown Restaurants Top Manhattan In Violations, Study Shows

Editor's Note: The New York City Department of Health contests the findings of RentHop's analysis. Restaurants that go out of business are removed from the public dataset cited in the report, which the department argued meant RentHop analysts could not accurately compare the number of violations issued across various years. RentHop has amended its report to note that "survivor bias" in the data makes such comparisons impossible.

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — Washington Heights boasts some excellent restaurants offering up food that one can't find anywhere else in Manhattan, but neighborhood eateries fall behind when it comes to cleanliness, according to a recently-published study.

Real estate listing site Rent Hop broke down Department of Health restaurant grades for each neighborhood in 2018 and found that the northern section of Washington Heights had the highest percent of restaurants with B or C grades in Manhattan.

The area of Washington Heights North, which Rent Hop defined as above the George Washington Bridge, had 19 restaurants that failed to make an A grade, constituting 15.7 percent of the neighborhood's eateries. Washington Heights South wasn't far behind with 14.6 percent of its restaurants earning B or C grades.

Washington Heights' neighbor to the north, Inwood, fared slightly better with only 12.1 percent of its restaurants failing to earn an A grade.

The numbers for Washington Heights are about twice as worse than those for Manhattan as a whole. Only 7.1 percent of all Manhattan restaurants received B or C grades from the Department of Health.

Restaurants must rack up a number of violations during an inspection to earn B or C grades, according to the Department of Health's grading methodology. Violations range in severity from general violations such as failing to properly sanitize equipment to critical violations and "public health hazards."

Check out how Washington Heights compares to other neighborhoods on this interactive map: