Methodology
Mochi P.I. turns public records and businesses' own websites into facts an agent can filter on. It does not copy reviews from any review platform.
Sources
| Source | What it provides |
|---|---|
dohmh | NYC Dept of Health restaurant inspections (data.cityofnewyork.us/d/43nn-pn8j) |
nys_sla | NY State Liquor Authority active licenses (data.ny.gov/d/9s3h-dpkz) |
dining_out_nyc | Dining Out NYC outdoor dining permits (data.cityofnewyork.us/d/fpeh-f7ci) |
overture | Overture Maps places (CDLA-Permissive-2.0 / Apache-2.0) |
website | The business's own website, rule-based extraction (robots.txt honored) |
Evidence types
Every fact is labelled with the kind of evidence behind it. Search can be restricted with evidence=official or evidence=business.
- Official record: NYC Health Dept inspections and grades, NY State Liquor Authority licences, Dining Out NYC permits.
- Business claim: the business's own website (schema.org markup, booking and ordering links, its own wording). Embedded customer reviews and review widgets are excluded.
- Directory category: a listing category, e.g. an Overture Maps "halal_restaurant" category or a Health Dept cuisine category. A category is not certification, and "Jewish/Kosher" is not treated as kosher.
- Extracted: our own inference. Always labelled as such.
What the records do and don't mean
- A liquor licence means the place is licensed to serve that class of alcohol, not what's on the menu tonight.
- An outdoor dining permit means permission, not that tables are out today (roadway dining is seasonal).
- "Grade" is the current letter grade only. A pending status (Z or P) means no current letter grade; the last letter grade is shown separately with its date.
- A missing record means no matching record found in our snapshot (unknown), never "no".
Matching records to places
- The place list is the NYC Health Dept's list of active food establishments.
- Liquor licences: same address, or nearby by coordinates, and the licensee's name must agree. It must share a distinctive word, with stricter agreement the farther away it is. Places with only generic names (e.g. "Rooftop") are never matched on location alone. Each licence goes to one place at most.
- Outdoor permits: same building (BBL/BIN) and within 200 m, or nearby by coordinates with close name agreement. Each permit goes to one place at most.
- Matching is audited on stratified samples (hotels, food halls, chains, shared addresses, borderline names). Ambiguous cases are left unmatched.
Dates
- Source date: when the source says the record was issued, changed or observed.
- Valid from / until: e.g. a licence's effective and expiry dates.
- Retrieved: when Mochi P.I. downloaded the source. A recently built page is not evidence that its facts were recently re-verified.
History
Sources are downloaded weekly and kept as dated snapshots. Changes are recorded against each source's own record IDs (establishment, licence, permit), so improving our matching never creates fake "changes". Some past events are also recovered from dates inside the source files.
Ranking
Ranked by strength of evidence, current health grade and how well documented a place is. No business pays for placement.
Known limitations
- Keyword evidence from business websites can be wrong or stale; the snippet and date are shown so it can be checked.
- Third-party map data sometimes lists the wrong website for a business; confirm booking links before use.
- Hours and availability change; confirm on the business's website or booking page.