It’s just a snapshot in time, but it’s a minimal tool to hold food providers accountable.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reports that restaurants are performing better on inspection and are cleaner than ever:
• Nearly 60% percent of restaurants now earn an A on their initial inspection;
• Letter grading has vastly diminished the public health risks associated with dining out; there has been a 23 percent drop in violations from the peak in 2012; and,
• 91 percent of New Yorkers approve of restaurant grading, 88 percent use grades in making their dining decisions and 76 percent feel more confident eating in an A-grade restaurant.

Maury Rubin, founder and owner of The City Bakery at 3 W 18th Street in Manhattan, first opened his doors 24 years ago and is well-known around the Union Square neighborhood for creating a hot chocolate so rich, you can almost chew it. Rubin still walks to work in the mornings and loves to shop at the outdoor Greenmarket for ingredients.

Last December, health inspectors from New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene served his bakery a “C” – the most damning letter grade on the rubric – for the second time in three years.

Inspectors found mice, roaches and flies on the premises and cited employees for not holding food at proper temperatures. Recently, Rubin sat down with me at a small table overlooking his spacious café, and explained why he thinks that “C” has more to say about the NYC Department of Health than his bakery.

There is a very clear point in time where everything that a food business in New York had to deal with became more burdensome. Roughly 12 to 14 years ago, the city had budget issues and discovered that very aggressive policing of the food business by the Health Department was an awesome new revenue stream. And I think that’s the no-turning-back moment. …

New York City, when it converted to the letter grade system, kept waving the banner of LA as its go-to example, but it literally took only one thing from LA — the letter grades. It took no methodology, it took none of the approach. It just took the scoring system. When the LA Department of Health walks into your restaurant, they are expecting it to be faithful to the plans that they’ve approved. What New York City is counting on is the opportunity to see things for the first time and say, “Oh no — that’s wrong.” It’s a gotcha system. It’s more adversarial, and it has nothing to do with a very simple, fabulous approach in LA of, “We’re in this together.”

My interest of a safe food supply has everything to do with the welfare of my customers and my business before I even start thinking about the New York City Department of Health. I think most reasonable people would agree on the reasonable view of an operation’s cleanliness, presentation and sanitation. I think that food inspectors walk into City Bakery and they see a big, clean, presentable place. I think this shifts their criteria to where they’re in our sub-basement looking — hoping — for a sink with a washer that’s loose. So 40 feet underground New York, you have a 10-inch hand sink that has a small leak — you’re going to pay about $1,200 for that leak. And that leak is going to be considered a critical violation.

Where one would hope that reason comes to bear in that moment — reason does not exist within the New York City Department of Health. It just doesn’t.

Restaurant inspection and disclosure programs like the A, B, C system favored by New York City, has a lot of problems: but I wouldn’t want to be the politician who says, this public health data is too complicated for you, so it’s secret.

The challenge is how to best improve disclosure systems.

Artyom Matusov, a city council analyst – not sure what that is — told The NY Post that most restaurants haven’t improved since the city instituted its letter-grade inspection system — a sham that has fattened City Hall coffers but hasn’t produced the public-health improvements touted by the city.

“We have a government agency that’s willing to blatantly lie to the public. If we can’t trust the Health Department to provide real scientific data . . . then we can’t trust any agency.”

Maybe somewhat over the top, but there’s so many caveats with inspection and disclosure systems that it’s easy pickings.

The city trumpeted data that showed more restaurants got an A grade on their initial inspection since the start of the program.

But that method overrepresents the number of A grades, since A’s will “stick around longer” — up to a year before another inspection.

“The city’s restaurant grading system is completely arbitrary . . . and most restaurants aren’t doing well on the test, which itself is convoluted and impossible to figure out,” Matusov said.

Working for the council’s Governmental Operations Committee, Matusov looked at how each restaurant performed during the initial inspection cycle to see if the new system was having an effect.

He found stagnation — about 30 percent of restaurants got A’s before and after the new system started.

“[The DOH] was saying to us that what we’re seeing is clear progress . . . There’s actually no improvement since before letter grading. It’s flat,” he noted.

“There’s been no improvement to overall health of New York City restaurants. It’s just a runaround game — we’re just trying to plug holes,” said Josh Grinker, chef at Brooklyn’s Stone Park restaurant.

Grinker said there’s no telling which violations, some having nothing to do with food, an inspector will target — for example, the construction of a non-food-contact surface.

“There’s something wrong with a department that’s supposed to be protecting the health of its citizens that isn’t looking at . . . factors that actually might have an impact on people’s health,” he said.

In March, the city tweaked its inspection system, making it less punitive by making a shift toward educating business owners first before fining them.

The DOH refused to answer any questions. The City Council, through spokesman Eric Koch, said that it “continues to monitor the restaurant grading system to ensure that it is effective in keeping restaurants safe for the public and that it is fairly administered.”

So asks Nell Casey of The Gothamist.

New York’s restaurant inspection system has been criticized for being unfairly punitive since its controversial inception under the Bloomberg administration. Even though fines have been dramatically reduced and the system altered to be more equitable, restaurant owners are still struggling with poor grades, which can severely impact their business.

That’s why it’s surprising to learn that city health inspectors seem to rather give a restaurant an “A” grade if the score hovers close to the 13 points or less needed to obtain that letter. On his data-heavy blog, Pratt City & Regional Planning faculty member Ben Wellington studies grading data since the program’s beginnings in 2010 and finds that three times as many restaurants received a score of 13 than a score of 14, which would have earned them a “B” grade. Wellington surmises that inspectors must be using “discretion” when issuing their final tally of violations.

Much like a teacher might boost a student’s final grade when taking other factors (attendance, participation, effort, etc.) into consideration, Wellington believes inspectors are “turning a blind eye towards that last violation that would put a restaurant over the edge.”