A Greenwich resident has turned hundreds of scanned health inspection forms into a free, searchable website covering every licensed food establishment in town.

Greenwich Dining Record launched the week of Sept. 7 with 1,733 inspections dating to 2023. The site listed 410 establishments as of Tuesday, Sept. 8, including restaurants, school kitchens, hotel kitchens, markets and delis. The records were obtained from the Town of Greenwich Department of Health under the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act, according to the site's research page.

Before the site existed, those records sat as scanned PDFs in the Health Department's filing system. Residents had no practical way to look up a specific restaurant.

Forty-one percent of inspections since 2023 found at least one violation tied directly to foodborne illness, Greenwich Free Press reported. Among open establishments, 43% had a clean record at their most recent inspection.

The site's founder, a longtime resident who is not publicly identified, told Greenwich Free Press he built the project because the public data was effectively invisible.

"I send a big thank you to the Health Dept for all they do," the founder said.

Each establishment gets its own page showing every inspection and violation, with a plain-language explanation of what each citation means. A color-coded system flags results: green for no violations, amber for non-priority violations only, red for at least one priority violation and grey for records pending verification. Priority violations are those most directly linked to foodborne illness, such as temperature control, contamination and employee illness.

The site also ranks open restaurants, bars, cafes and bakeries with full kitchens across four lists: Most Priority Violations, Cleanest Records, Most Improved and Declining Records. School, club, church and institutional kitchens, markets and pharmacies appear in the directory but are excluded from rankings.

Every violation was cross-checked against the inspector's written tally. Records that did not reconcile are labeled and kept out of the ranked lists.

The site carries no advertising. Its sponsorship policy bars any food establishment, including restaurants, markets, caterers, their owners, agents, trade groups and suppliers, from paying the site anything.

The founder told Greenwich Free Press that the Greenwich Health Department has seen the website. Greenwich Dining Record is continuously updated and can be reached at [email protected].