• resultFail
• critical violations1
• last inspectedOctober 5, 2026 →
• address290 Washington St, Brighton 02135

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Is Cafe Lava & Bento clean?

Cafe Lava & Bento is currently Fail from Boston Inspectional Services, Health Division, from an inspection on October 5, 2026. Inspectors wrote up 1 critical violation — the kind most directly linked to foodborne illness. On Cooked's ladder that reads cooked 🚩.

What did inspectors find at Cafe Lava & Bento?

These are the violations recorded at the most recent inspection on October 5, 2026, in plain English, with the city's own wording underneath.

• ⚠️(A)-(P) Person-In-Charge-Duties (Pf)
• ⚠️In-Use Utensils Between-Use Storage (C)
• ⚠️Ready-To-Eat Time/Temperature Control for Safety Food Date Marking (Pf)
• ⚠️Discarding or Reconditioning Unsafe Adulterated or Contaminated Food (P)critical
• ⚠️Handwashing Sinks Installation (Pf)
• ⚠️Maintaining Premises Unnecessary Items and Litter (C)

Cafe Lava & Bento inspection and administrative history

Cafe Lava & Bento has 15 inspections on record going back to October 12, 2023. The 12 most recent are shown below.

Graded visits shown below · newest first · tap a date for the record

History worth a look: 3 of these 7 displayed graded visits read cooked. The current result above stands on its own.

Cafe Lava & Bento vs Brighton

Brighton runs 84% clean across 483 tracked restaurants — 392 clean, 40 mid, 36 cooked.

Against the 483 spots Cooked tracks in Brighton, this one comes out cleaner than 5% of them.

Other spots in Brighton

• ✕ Lakon Brighton
  mid · October 21, 2026
• ✓ From Scratch
  clean · August 26, 2026
• ✓ Pizza Etc
  clean · November 6, 2024
• ✓ Fuel America
  clean · April 14, 2026
• ✓ Stop & Shop Supermarket/Starbucks
  clean · July 1, 2026
• ✓ Nakhon
  clean · October 2, 2026

See every restaurant inspection in Brighton →

How Boston 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.

Read the Boston ratings guide →

Inspection findings and available history come from the authority’s published records. Cooked checks daily; publication can lag behind an inspection. Read the date on each result and check the official source for newer information.

Source: Boston Inspectional Services, Health Division via Analyze Boston. Cooked refreshes this data daily — this listing's most recent inspection is dated October 5, 2026. Inspection results describe one moment in a kitchen's life, not a permanent verdict.

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Cooked covers 10 cities on official inspection data — see who's clean, mid, or cooked near you.