Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge

• ratingRated Excellent
• inspection score10 pts
• critical violations1
• last inspectedMay 22, 2025 →
• address226 1St Ave S, Kent 98032

Is Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge clean?

Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge is currently Rated Excellent from Public Health — Seattle & King County, from an inspection on May 22, 2025. Inspectors wrote up 1 critical violation — the kind most directly linked to foodborne illness. On Cooked's ladder that reads clean 😇.

What did inspectors find at Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge?

These are the violations recorded at the most recent inspection on May 22, 2025, in plain English, with the city's own wording underneath.

• 🍴utensils stored sketchy
  4200 - Food-contact surfaces maintained, cleaned, sanitized
• 🧊cold food not cold enoughcritical
  2120 - Proper cold holding temperatures; between 42 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (6 to 7 degrees Celsius (C))

When was Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge last inspected?

Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge has 7 inspections on record going back to May 12, 2021, averaging 5 points.

Rafiki Restaurant & Lounge vs Kent

Kent runs 78% clean across 365 tracked restaurants — 283 clean, 77 mid, 5 cooked.

Against the 365 spots Cooked tracks in Kent, this one comes out cleaner than 27% of them.

Other spots in Kent

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• EX 7-Eleven #39639A
  clean · May 26, 2026
• EX Comfort Inn - Kent
  clean · April 24, 2026
• EX Burger King #11152
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• ⏳ Charger Espresso Cart
  clean · June 12, 2026

See every restaurant inspection in Kent →

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 May 22, 2025. 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.