Food with mold or is old (and encrusted): 2 Miami-Dade Sedano’s stores fail inspection

Phrases such as “old, yellow, encrusted food” and “mold-like grime” showed up on Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors recent reports after visits to two Sedano’s Supermarkets in West Miami-Dade.

Unlike failed restaurant inspections by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, state Department of Agriculture failed inspections of supermarkets, grocers, convenience stores, food processors, distributors and storage facilities don’t close the establishment.

But, an inspector can put Stop-Use Orders on enough equipment or areas that management decides the establishment can’t operate efficiently enough to open. That didn’t happen at either of these Sedano’s, although Inspectors Wenndy Ayerdis and Guisella Uribe did have to drop a couple of Stop-Use Orders on the store they visited on Monday.

Sedano’s, 8601 Bird Rd., Monday

▪ Employees flouted handwashing rules throughout the store, as food employees in the kitchen, food service, cafe, meat, produce, deli and seafood areas, “did not wash hands between entering and exiting food preparation area and handling food items.”

▪ One deli area worker “touched ready-to-eat ham with bare hands,” earning that ham a trip to the trash.

▪ In other deli area ham problems, a pack of turkey ham was on its eighth day in the deli display cold unit, exceeding the seven-day limit by a day. At least they knew how long that ham had been there. Sweet ham and mortadella were there with no date mark “and employees did not know when they were opened.”

Basura.

▪ More ham problems were discovered in the retail deli meat area where sliced La Coronella Serrano ham was cut, packaged and put in the cold unit, ready for customer pickup, at 52 degrees. That’s 11 degrees above the safe range (under 41 degrees) for safe cold keeping.

▪ The kitchen’s Vulcan hot holding unit got taken out of action with a Stop-Use Order when measuring it’s ambient temperature found it could get no hotter than 123 degrees. That’s not getting it done when you’ve got to keep food at 135 degrees or above. Pork ribs, pork tamales, chicken stew, cassava from that hot holding unit were joined in the trash by plantains, chicken cordon bleu and pork tamales from the retail area hot holding unit.

▪ In the cafe, the orange juice machine’s “cracked and broken plastic cover...where the oranges are squeezed” got it slapped with a Stop-Use Order.

▪ Somebody needed to take a little time with a cloth and some Fabuloso (or an actual antibacterial cleaner) to address the kitchen’s “dirt, dust, food debris and grease deposits encrusted on the floor and walls near the stoves, ovens, and fryers” and the backroom’s “dirt, dust, debris, and old food residue accumulated beneath the various shelving units.”

▪ In the meat area, the inspectors saw “old, yellow food residue encrusted on the interior of the meat grinder, tenderizer blades, on the blade and wheel of the band saw, slicer blade and guard.” They found the same thing in the deli area minus the band saw part.

▪ The kitchen’s cooking pans, trays and utensils weren’t sanitized after washing and rinsing. Then again, the sanitizer solution at the ware wash sink wasn’t very sanitary, with “black floating particles from the equipment and utensils that had been washed.”

▪ In the cafe, meat processing and seafood areas, the detergent and sanitizer tubes “installed above the various ware wash sinks were found with mold-like grime inside the tubes.”

READ MORE: Roaches, different colors of mold and other filth problems at a Miami-Dade Presidente

Sedano’s, 14524 SW Eighth St., Oct. 31

Nobody seemed interested in covering foods against any insects, sweat or spit. The kitchen had uncovered trays of breads, empanadas, croquettes. The cafe had an uncovered box of already-washed oranges.

“White mold-like growth encrusted on numerous golden berries packaged in clam shell containers in the produce retail cold unit.”

Also in the retail area, where folks could grab and go, watermelon and cantaloupe were fit for the trash after still being too warm after four hours of attempted cooling. The hot holding unit had plantains, shredded pork and rotisserie chicken that weren’t warm enough for save selling.

That food wound up in the garbage as did beef, chicken, ham and cheese empanadas and spinach pastries left on a rack next to the walk-in cooler door. Unsurprisingly, they were neither cold enough (under 41 degrees) or warm enough (135 degrees) but in the middle at 68 to 70 degrees, perfectly wrong.

The meat area’s grinder and band saw wheel had “old food residue,” and the grinder, meat tenderizer and meat slicer had been in use more than four hours without being washed, rinsed and sanitized.

The cafe area had “black, mold-like grime encrusted on the interior of the ice machine.”

READ MORE: One death, one miscarriage in a listeria outbreak linked to deli food in six states