Cooked?How Los Angeles restaurant health grades work
Los Angeles restaurant health grades 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, mid, and cooked map to LA County’s A, B, and C window placards.
| Official result | What it means | Cooked comparison |
|---|---|---|
| A | 90–100 points | clean |
| B | 80–89 points | mid |
| C | Below 80 points | cooked |
How Los Angeles actually grades restaurants
Los Angeles County posts a letter placard in the window, and unlike New York the score runs the friendly way: higher is better. 90 to 100 points earns an A, 80 to 89 a B, and anything below that a C. The county inspects roughly every six months to a year depending on risk, and a failed inspection can close a kitchen until it is fixed. Because LA’s scores are final at the time of inspection — there is no pending window — a letter can be read straight off the score when the placard field is blank.
What the public record can tell you
LA County Department of Public Health, Environmental Health 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 grade 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.