Contact Us

Public Health
Seattle & King County
401 5th Ave., Suite 1300
Seattle, WA 98104

Phone: 206-296-4600
TTY Relay: 711

Toll-free: 800-325-6165

Click here to email us

Public Records Requests

Instructions to submit a Public Records Request
Tell us about possible unsafe food handling activity

If you see or experience inappropriate food handling practices by food workers and/or unhealthy conditions at food establishments in King County, please report them to Public Health - Seattle & King County as soon as possible.

Public Health responds to all complaints in a timely manner. This usually involves a visit to the site in question, assessment of the problem, working with the site owner or manager to correct the problem, and education of other staff to avoid the problem in the future.

Did you or others in your party get sick? If so, do not use the e-mail form below to report the illness. Instead, call the Communicable Disease and Epidemiology office at (206) 296-4774, Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. You will be briefly interviewed over the phone about what you ate and drank at the food service establishment and what symptoms you experienced. All information will be kept confidential. Your answers will help us determine if there is a problem with the establishment. If no one became ill, use the form below to submit a complaint about a food establishment in King County, Washington.

Use the form below to submit a complaint about a food establishment in King County, Washington State. Parts of the form below marked with a red asterisk are required.

Your contact information
Your name:

Your email address:

Your phone number with area code (optional):

Privacy policy: To protect your privacy, all personal information that you include on this form including email addresses, names and phone numbers, etc. are kept in high confidence and will not be shared with the food establishment in question.

Name and address of the food establishment in question

*State the full name of the food establishment. Please do not use abbreviations or nicknames:

*Street address:

*City or town in King County, Washington State (note: We do not investigate establishments outside this area):

Zip code, if known:

Sometimes there are chains of food establishments with the same name (i.e. McDonalds) or similar names to other restaurants so to ensure our inspection team is sent to the one you are writing about, we need to know its location.

If you are unsure of the exact name and address, click here to use our online Food Inspection search engine to help you search for the one you visited.

Describe in detail the unsafe food handling practice you observed
*Date and time of occurrence:

*Please write out the details of your observations:

During inspections, the inspector uses a form to determine if violations are classified as Red Critical Violations (i.e. food handling practices that, when not done properly, are most likely to lead to food borne illnesses) and Blue Violations (i.e. primarily maintenance and sanitation issues that are not likely to be the cause of a food borne illness.) Click here for detailed explanations.