Cooked?How Boston restaurant inspection results work
Boston restaurant inspection results explained in plain English: the official scale, what each result means, and how Cooked maps it to clean, mid or cooked.
The short version
clean = passed, cooked = failed on critical food-safety factors, mid = failed on minor stuff only.
| Official result | What it means | Cooked comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Pass | Official pass | clean |
| Fail, minor findings only | No critical three-star finding | mid |
| Fail with a critical finding | At least one three-star food-safety risk | cooked |
How Boston actually grades restaurants
Boston reports inspections as a pass or a fail, with no score and no letter. What separates a bad fail from a trivial one is the violation severity ladder: a single star is a minor issue, two stars is more serious, and three stars marks a critical foodborne-illness risk factor — temperature abuse, bad handwashing, cross-contamination. A restaurant can fail on paperwork alone, which is not the same as failing on food safety. Cooked splits Boston fails accordingly: a fail with a three-star violation reads cooked, a fail on minor items only reads mid.
What the public record can tell you
Boston Inspectional Services, Health Division also publishes itemized findings, so Cooked can show the issues recorded on a particular inspection. The dated result is useful evidence about what an inspector observed, but it is not a promise about every meal served before or after that visit. Ratings can also reach the public days or weeks after the inspection itself, so Cooked displays the authority’s inspection date rather than pretending the record arrived in real time.
Why Cooked adds a traffic light
The clean, mid and cooked labels are a comparison layer, not replacement grades. The official result remains visible everywhere. That makes it possible to compare cities without suggesting that unlike systems are identical—and keeps pending, unrated and unavailable information separate from a failing result.
Corrections and updates
Published August 8, 2026. No corrections recorded.