Cafe Selam

• ratingRated Good
• inspection score32 pts
• critical violations2
• last inspectedSeptember 29, 2026 →
• address2715 E Cherry St, #B, Seattle 98122

Is Cafe Selam clean?

Cafe Selam is currently Rated Good from Public Health — Seattle & King County, from an inspection on September 29, 2026. Inspectors wrote up 2 critical violations — the kind most directly linked to foodborne illness. On Cooked's ladder that reads clean 😇.

What did inspectors find at Cafe Selam?

These are the violations recorded at the most recent inspection on September 29, 2026, in plain English, with the city's own wording underneath.

• ⚠️4900 - Adequate ventilation; lighting; designated areas used
• ⚠️3200 - Insects, rodents, animals not present; entrance controlled
• ♻️single-use stuff being reused
  4300 - Nonfood-contact surfaces maintained and clean
• 🛠️equipment grimy or busted
  4800 - Physical facilities properly installed, maintained, cleaned; unnecessary persons excluded from establishment
• ❓food from an unapproved sourcecritical
  0600 - Adequate handwashing facilities
• 🦪shellfish with no paper trailcritical
  1100 - Proper disposition of returned, unsafe, or contaminated food; proper date marking procedures for food at high risk for Listeria

When was Cafe Selam last inspected?

Cafe Selam has 14 inspections on record going back to February 3, 2021, averaging 19 points. The 12 most recent are shown below.

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

Cafe Selam vs Central Area

Central Area runs 90% clean across 198 tracked restaurants — 179 clean, 19 mid, 0 cooked.

Against the 198 spots Cooked tracks in Central Area, this one comes out cleaner than 3% of them.

Other spots in Central Area

• OK Zagol Ethiopian Restaurant
  mid · May 27, 2026
• EX Toshio's Teriyaki
  clean · October 5, 2026
• ⏳ Shell Madison Express Lane
  clean · March 27, 2026
• GD King's Deli
  clean · September 17, 2026
• EX Arco Am/Pm
  clean · July 9, 2026
• EX Circle K # 9653
  clean · October 14, 2026

See every restaurant inspection in Central Area →

How Seattle grades restaurants

Public Health — Seattle & King County posts a word, not a letter: Excellent, Good, Okay, or Needs To Improve. The rating is deliberately not a snapshot — it averages the establishment’s recent routine inspections, so one bad day does not sink a consistently clean kitchen and one good day does not rescue a bad one. Inspectors score violations in red points for things that directly cause foodborne illness and blue points for everything else; around 45 red points triggers a mandatory re-inspection. Newly opened or recently changed spots can show as Not Rated until enough inspections accumulate.

Read the Seattle 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: Public Health — Seattle & King County via King County Open Data. Cooked refreshes this data daily — this listing's most recent inspection is dated September 29, 2026. Inspection results describe one moment in a kitchen's life, not a permanent verdict.

check your own block 📸

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