The purposes of this study were to identify the evaluation categories, areas, attributes of the hospital food service and to define the relative importance of the evaluation categories, areas, attributes of the hospital food service using analytic hierarchy process. A survey was conducted from January 8th to 25th in 2007. Questionnaires were mailed to the 310 directors of dietetic departments of hospitals that included 160 primary hospitals, 107 secondary hospitals, and 43 tertiary hospitals. The result of the analytic hierarchy process indicated that relative importance of evaluation category was 0.5259 for food service management and 0.3407 for nutrition care. The food service management consisted of four subcategories, which are equipment standard, sanitation, production, and delivery service. Sanitation(relative importance: 0.2652) was the most important area among the subcategories and it was followed by equipment standard(0.2067), delivery service(0.1864) and production(0.1848). The nutrition care has two subcategories, menu management and meal management. The relative importance of menu management(0.4174) was higher than that of meal management(0.3555). The quality of food service and nutrition care to inpatients can be improved by the evaluation system based on appropriate applications of the developed evaluation indicators for hospital food service systems.