To find the city's restaurant inspection reports online, type in your restaurant's name in the window to your right, or go to:

dining.ci.anchorage.ak.us/esan.

Once you get there, you can search for restaurants as well as schools, senior centers -- any public place where food is served.

If the city found any health violations, you'll see a listing of food-safety rules that were broken on the left side. The number of points the restaurant lost for each violation on the right.

And in the middle?

That can be hard to read, because you'll see some legalese describing various food-safety regulations, but it's also where you'll find the most detailed part of the inspection: The inspector's comments, written in capital letters.

For example: "OBSERVED FOOD WORKER ON COOK LINE RUB NOSE WITH PALM OF HAND AND CONTINUED TO PREPARE FOOD/MEAT WITHOUT WASHING HANDS THOROUGHLY."

What you won't see is a final score out of 100.

The city says these scores can be misleading, because each inspection is a snapshot of what the inspector happened to see on that particular day. If you must know, just add up the number of points lost and subtract from 100.

One tip: If you see the city Health Department is routinely visiting a business for "enforcement" or "re-inspection," that's usually not a good sign. It means inspectors have to keep coming back to see if earlier problems have been fixed.

Find Kyle Hopkins' political blog online at adn.com/alaskapolitics or call him at 257-4334.