Food Hygiene Ratings: How to Check a London Restaurant

Published 9 November 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

A food hygiene rating is a number from 0 to 5 that a council food safety officer gives a kitchen after an inspection. It measures how well the business keeps to food hygiene law on the day the officer called, not how good the cooking is. In England nobody has to put the sticker in the window, so the only reliable check is to look the business up on the Food Standards Agency's register by its name and the first part of its postcode.

The scheme covers restaurants, pubs, cafés, takeaways, market stalls, hotels and food shops in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Food Standards Agency runs it with the local councils, which do the inspecting. The rest of this page is about reading the number properly, and the few things that make it misleading.

Almost every page on this site that names a place to eat gives its rating and inspection month; this page explains those figures. For eating out in general, start with our food and drink section.

What the officer looks at, and what the number ignores

An inspection checks three things. The first is how hygienically food is handled: how it is prepared, cooked, reheated, cooled and stored. The second is the physical condition of the premises, including cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation and pest control. The third is how the business manages food safety: its procedures, its training and its records, which tell the officer how confident they can be that standards will hold after they leave.

The rating says nothing, in the Food Standards Agency's words, about food quality, customer service, culinary skill, presentation or comfort. A famous restaurant can hold a 2 and a plain sandwich bar a 5.

Since April 2016 in England the online record also shows how the business did on each of the three elements separately. That breakdown is often more useful than the headline number. A 4 with "good" for food handling and a weaker mark for record-keeping tells a different story from a 4 where the kitchen itself was the problem.

Why one bad area drags the whole number down

The rating is not an average. The officer scores each of the three elements, where a lower score means better compliance, and the rating depends on two things at once: the total of the three scores, and the worst single score. The Food Standards Agency's published guidance for councils, called the Brand Standard, sets out the mapping.

The second column is the part people miss. The guidance gives the example of a business scoring 5, 5 and 20: the total is 30, which on its own would earn a 3, but the single score of 20 pulls it down to a 1. In plain terms, a kitchen cannot hide a serious problem in one area behind good marks in the other two. A 3 therefore means no single area was badly wrong, which is more reassuring than "middling" suggests.

An empty window tells you nothing in London

In England a business does not have to display its rating. It is encouraged to, and most places with a 5 do, because a green sticker by the door is free advertising. A place with a 2 is under no obligation to tell you. So the absence of a sticker in London is not a warning sign and not a reassurance: it is simply missing information.

The rules are different elsewhere in the United Kingdom. In Wales and Northern Ireland the scheme is set out in law, the sticker must be displayed where customers can see it before they go in, and staff must tell you the rating if you ask in person or by telephone. Scotland runs a separate scheme with two results, Pass and Improvement Required, which you will see on the same search site if you travel north.

The window and the website can differ for a while for honest reasons: the business has appealed, or the council, which uploads at least every 28 days, has not yet added the new rating. A business deliberately showing a better rating than the one online can be reported to the council through the search site's "report a problem" link.

Looking a place up in under a minute

The register is at ratings.food.gov.uk. It has two boxes, one for the business name and one for a street, town or postcode, and you get the best results by filling in both.

1. Type the name as it appears on the sign, without "The" and without the word "restaurant". If nothing comes back, try a shorter form of the name.
2. Add the first half of the postcode, such as SE1, W1D or E1. The Food Standards Agency itself recommends this, and it matters more in London than anywhere else.
3. Open the record and read three things: the rating, the date of the inspection, and the address. Make sure the address is the branch you are standing outside.
4. Look at the breakdown of the three elements if the rating is below 5, to see which part pulled it down.

The postcode step matters. Every branch of a chain is rated separately by its own council, and a search on the name alone returns branches from all over the country. One branch of a well-known group can hold a 5 while another a mile away holds a 2. Our guide to London's chain restaurants explains the groups you will meet most often.

One more snag: the register holds the trading name the council recorded, sometimes a company name rather than the name over the door. Councils are asked to add other brand names as "also trading as", but if the sign gets nothing, search the street.

Reading the inspection date as carefully as the number

A rating is, in the agency's words, a snapshot of the standards found on the day. How often a business is inspected depends on the risk it poses: the type of food, the number and type of customers, what processes it carries out and how it did last time. The gap between inspections runs from six months for the highest-risk businesses to two years for lower-risk ones, and can be longer for very low-risk premises. The agency also notes that councils sometimes check businesses by methods other than a full inspection, so the date shown may not be the most recent contact.

Our own rule of thumb: a rating from the last year or so describes the kitchen you will eat from; one more than about two years old describes a kitchen that may since have changed owner, chef or standards.

"Awaiting inspection", "exempt" and the place that is not there at all

Not every record shows a number. These are the other results you will meet:

• Awaiting inspection. The business has registered with the council but has not yet been rated. New openings show this, and councils are encouraged to hand them an "awaiting inspection" sticker. It is not a bad sign, only an unknown one.
• Awaiting publication. The business has been inspected and has appealed the result, or the appeal period has not yet run out. Ratings of 0 to 4 are published three to five weeks after the inspection for this reason; a 5 goes online as soon as it is uploaded.
• Exempt. The council inspects the business but does not rate it, because it is low-risk and not what most people would think of as a food business, such as a newsagent selling wrapped sweets.

Then there is the business that is not on the register at all. Most often that means it has closed, which is why every writer on this site checks the register before naming anywhere. But there is a second reason. When a business changes hands, the guidance tells councils to treat it as new: the previous owner's rating is removed and the premises shows as awaiting inspection under the new operator. A restaurant that has vanished under its old name may be trading under a new one, so search the street or the postcode as well as the name.

How a business can challenge or improve its rating

A low rating is not necessarily permanent, and the record sometimes tells you that a business is already working on it. A business has 21 days from being notified to appeal in writing, and the appeal is decided by someone other than the officer who gave the rating. It can also use a "right to reply", a short statement published beside the rating, to say what it has fixed or to explain unusual circumstances on the day.

Once the officer's improvements are done, a business that did not get a 5 can ask for a re-rating inspection before its next scheduled visit; some councils in England charge for this. A 2 with a recent right-to-reply note is worth checking again in a month or two.

What a 3, a 2 and a 0 mean for your dinner

This is how we read the scale, as editorial judgement rather than official advice.

• 5 and 4: eat without a second thought.
• 3: the official wording is "generally satisfactory", and because of the worst-score rule above it means nothing was seriously wrong on the day. Many good, busy small kitchens sit here.
• 2: the officer found things that needed putting right. We would choose somewhere else when there is a choice, which in London there almost always is.
• 1 and 0: major or urgent improvement was required. We would walk past. Where an officer finds an imminent risk to health, the law requires them to act, which can mean stopping part of a business or closing it until it is safe.

On markets the stall next to a 5 may hold a 1; our guide to Whitecross Street shows how wide the spread can be on one row of pitches. Check the stall you are queuing at, not its neighbour. Our guide to London's food markets has more on eating from stalls.

Why this site never names a place rated below 3

We tell international visitors where to eat, and they cannot easily check a business in a language or a system they do not know. So we hold ourselves to one rule that has no exceptions: we never name a food business rated below 3, however famous it is and whatever caveat we might add. If a well-known café or pub fails that test, we leave it out and say so in general terms, rather than recommend it with a warning attached.

We print the inspection month beside every rating we quote, because the number changes at each inspection. Check again before you go, whether the place is from our cheap eats or our Michelin-starred list; the register is the only source that is always current.

If something goes wrong after a meal

For suspected food poisoning, the Food Standards Agency says to seek medical advice and to contact the local council's environmental health or food safety team. Away from home, the NHS 111 service is the route to medical advice, as our guide to health care for visitors explains. To find the right council for a restaurant, search for the business on the register and click its name: the record shows which local authority inspects it and how to contact them. The same search site has a form for reporting hygiene concerns.

Booking ahead lets you check a place at home rather than on the pavement; see how restaurant bookings work, and our guide to reading a British menu for the marks you meet once you sit down.

Frequently asked questions

Do restaurants in London have to display their food hygiene rating?

No. In England displaying the sticker is voluntary, although the Food Standards Agency encourages it. In Wales and Northern Ireland businesses must display it and must tell you the rating if you ask. A London restaurant with no sticker is not necessarily hiding anything, but you will need to look it up to know.

Is a food hygiene rating of 3 safe?

A 3 means hygiene standards were "generally satisfactory" at the last inspection. Because the rating is capped by the worst of the three areas inspected, a 3 also means no single area was badly wrong. We name places rated 3 and above; we never name a place rated 2 or lower.

How do I check the hygiene rating of a restaurant in London?

Go to ratings.food.gov.uk, type the business name in the first box and the first part of the postcode, such as W1D or SE1, in the second. Open the record and check the address matches the branch you mean, then read the rating and the inspection date together.

Why can't I find a restaurant on the food hygiene register?

It may be listed under its company name rather than the name on the sign, it may be new and awaiting inspection, or it may have changed owner and been re-registered. Try searching by street or postcode alone. If it has disappeared completely, it has very likely closed.

Sources

• Food Standards Agency - Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (checked November 2026)
• Food Standards Agency - Food Hygiene Rating Scheme: guidance for businesses (appeals, right to reply, re-rating) (checked November 2026)
• Food Standards Agency - The Brand Standard: guidance for local authorities, revision 8 (checked November 2026)
• Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings search (checked November 2026)