You might think the six-seat Garden City Cafe at West 40th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, with its cheerful, snow-schmutzed awning and its prominent A.T.M. sign, is a greasy spoon. But you could not be more wrong. There, in its window, shimmers an 8-inch-by-10-inch blue “A” from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the beacon that certifies the ultimate attainment of kitchen purity.
And in a trifecta of wholesomeness, the two restaurants directly to its north have also proudly posted their new A’s — the Tagine Dining Gallery and the Troy Turkish Grill.
Indeed, under the department’s six-month-old restaurant grading system, nearly 60 percent of some 24,000 restaurants in the city have inspection scores that rate an A, from a liberal sprinkling in Chinatown to a true sanito-palooza of nine blue A placards in the food court at Grand Central Terminal.
Meanwhile, some of the city’s most highly regarded restaurants have struggled to get on the A list. In December an inspector disturbed the hushed precincts of Corton, which The New York Times gave three stars, to dispense 48 points for a possible C grade. Similarly, restaurant Daniel, the winner of four stars, received an initial B score of 19 in November. Even the haute Bernardin, another four-star winner, received a B score of 22 in August. Each endured derision from food bloggers for a few weeks before earning A grades on later inspections.
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