Cooked?
Top Shelf
- resultPass
- critical violations0
- last inspectedMay 18, 2026
- address161 Charles St, Boston 02114
Is Top Shelf clean?
Top Shelf is currently Pass from Boston Inspectional Services, Health Division, from an inspection on May 18, 2026. No critical violations were recorded at that visit. On Cooked's ladder that reads clean 😇.
What did inspectors find at Top Shelf?
Nothing was written up at the most recent inspection on May 18, 2026. A clean sheet like this is the best possible result — no violations of any severity were recorded.
When was Top Shelf last inspected?
Top Shelf has 46 inspections on record going back to June 28, 2007. The 12 most recent are shown below.
| date | result | score |
|---|---|---|
| May 18, 2026 | Pass | |
| December 29, 2025 | Pass | |
| March 12, 2025 | Pass | |
| March 5, 2025 | Fail | |
| May 24, 2024 | Pass | |
| May 15, 2024 | Fail | |
| January 3, 2024 | — | |
| June 21, 2023 | Pass | |
| June 15, 2023 | Fail | |
| January 18, 2023 | — | |
| March 15, 2022 | — | |
| June 2, 2021 | Pass |
Top Shelf vs Beacon Hill
Beacon Hill runs 85% clean across 149 tracked restaurants — 123 clean, 10 mid, 11 cooked.
Against the 149 spots Cooked tracks in Beacon Hill, this one comes out cleaner than 15% of them.
Other spots in Beacon Hill
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.
Source: Boston Inspectional Services, Health Division via Analyze Boston. Cooked refreshes this data daily — this listing's most recent inspection is dated May 18, 2026. Inspection results describe one moment in a kitchen's life, not a permanent verdict.