After seeing my colleague, Maureen, dive into NYC Open Data with posts on NYC Vehicle Crashes and Parking Tickets, I figured I should take a look around myself to see what other kinds of data the city has made public. Turns out there are more than 1300 data sets available on the site.

After some digging, I found an OData data source with the Department of Health’s inspection results for all 24,000+ restaurants across the five boroughs. Finding a place to eat in the city can be a bit of a task, so I put together a little dashboard to help the process.

About the Data Viz

I’ve made a bar chart on the left showing the top 20 types of restaurants found in the city. Choosing one of these cuisines along with an area on the map will generate a few suggestions that may satiate your hunger. Selecting one of the recommendations will then bring up a link to the selected restaurant on Google Maps.

And if what you’re in the mood for didn’t quite make the “top 20” list on the side, you can always use the search bar to narrow down the results (bagels, for example, could be a good start).

Go ahead and give it a try!

Other Tidbits

You also may notice that choosing one of the types of food will alter the map a bit to show where you may want to look if you want more choices. Looking for Mexican? Head to Union Square or East Harlem. Italian? Cab it on down to Tribeca. And while you can see that pizza spots are (unsurprisingly) pretty well distributed across the city, I can personally attest to the presence of many excellent options around the East Village.

Since this was built from the Department of Health’s records, I’ve used their data to improve the recommendations a bit. This tool will only suggest restaurants with an “A” rating and is built to give you the closest matching restaurant with the best health rating score on its most recent inspection.

If you’re curious about these ratings, hovering over a ZIP code on the map will show what percentage of restaurants in that area have “A” ratings. So, while 94% of eateries in Midtown West boast top marks, that number drops to 86% as you move south into Chelsea. Just something to keep in mind …