How to report a restaurant health concern in Atlanta

Find the right county office

Use the restaurant’s exact address to identify its county. Georgia DPH directs restaurant complaints and local inspection questions to county environmental health offices. The state’s contact page is the starting point when you are unsure which office handles a location.

For another county, use DPH’s county-office directory. Our inspection lookup currently covers Fulton County; it does not replace the official complaint channels for the rest of metro Atlanta.

Fulton’s complaint page also explains that its environmental health department does not regulate grocery or convenience stores. If the concern involves a different kind of food business, confirm the responsible agency before assuming the restaurant complaint route applies.

Prepare the useful details

Fulton’s form asks for your contact information, the complaint location’s name and address, a complaint type and a description. It also offers an option to request anonymity. Read the current form’s requirements before submitting; selecting that option does not mean the form collects no personal information.

Source: Fulton County’s environmental health complaint form.

To make your account easy to follow, prepare these details:

• The exact branch. Include the street address and suite where applicable.
• The visit date and approximate time. Keep the time of your visit separate from when you filed the complaint.
• What you directly observed. Describe the food, place or action as specifically as you can.
• What remains uncertain. Distinguish something you saw from a conclusion or a secondhand account.

You do not need to assign a violation code yourself. A clear account gives the office the information it needs to consider the concern. Keep a copy of what you submit and any acknowledgment or reference number the agency provides.

If you think food made you ill

CDC recommends talking with your healthcare provider and reporting suspected food poisoning to your local health department. Write down what you ate and did during the week before becoming ill, including restaurants and events, and keep any receipts.

Symptoms can begin well after a meal, so the most recent restaurant you visited is not automatically the source. Share your timeline with health officials even if you do not know which food was involved. See CDC’s guidance on what to do if you think you have food poisoning.

After you submit a complaint

Keep the complaint and the official findings separate. Your submission records a concern; a later inspection records what an inspector observed during that visit. Neither a submission nor an older score establishes the cause of an illness.

Use the county office’s contact channel to ask about your submission or request related records. DPH routes local record requests to county offices. We cannot establish whether an agency acted on a particular complaint from the absence of a newer inspection in our lookup.

For Fulton locations, our inspection lookup can help you read available dated reports. The report-reading guide explains how to interpret those findings. If an error is on a NickO Report page, use our correction form; restaurant health complaints go to the official health department.