Cooked?
Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill
- ratingRated Good
- inspection score20 pts
- critical violations2
- last inspectedMarch 18, 2026
- address5506 22Nd Ave Nw, Seattle 98107
Is Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill clean?
Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill is currently Rated Good from Public Health — Seattle & King County, from an inspection on March 18, 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 Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill?
These are the violations recorded at the most recent inspection on March 18, 2026, in plain English, with the city's own wording underneath.
- ❓food from an unapproved sourcecritical0600 - Adequate handwashing facilities
- 📄consumer advisory missingcritical2500 - Toxic substances properly identified, stored, used
When was Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill last inspected?
Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill has 6 inspections on record going back to April 20, 2023, averaging 18 points.
| date | result | score |
|---|---|---|
| March 18, 2026 | Rated Good | 20 pts |
| September 11, 2025 | Rated Good | 18 pts |
| February 27, 2025 | Rated Good | 18 pts |
| August 28, 2024 | Rated Good | 16 pts |
| February 8, 2024 | Rated Good | 21 pts |
| April 20, 2023 | Rated Good | 17 pts |
Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill vs Ballard
Ballard runs 95% clean across 353 tracked restaurants — 335 clean, 18 mid, 0 cooked.
Against the 353 spots Cooked tracks in Ballard, this one comes out cleaner than 3% of them.
Other spots in Ballard
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.
Source: Public Health — Seattle & King County via King County Open Data. Cooked refreshes this data daily — this listing's most recent inspection is dated March 18, 2026. Inspection results describe one moment in a kitchen's life, not a permanent verdict.