A Subway, a Wingstop and 8 more filthy Key West, Miami, Broward, Palm Beach restaurants
Spanning South Florida to bring you the wide variety of restaurant filth and bad food safety, The Sick and Shut Down List returns with two weeks worth of restaurant inspection failures from Key West to Royal Palm Beach.
Hope your tomatoes and chimichurri didn’t get sneezed on at your buffet.
A reminder that a rotation, past inspections and customer complaints determine who gets inspected. We do not do that. We also don’t do the inspections. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors do that. Restaurants that fail inspection are closed until they pass a re-inspection.
We just report it without passion or prejudice, a spoonful of humor and a dash of judgment.
In alphabetical order...
Amigo’s Mexican & Spanish Restaurant, 4720 Okeechobee Rd., West Palm Beach: Complaint inspection, two total violations, two High Priority violations.
Rodents marking their territory in the dining room with three pieces of poo will get you closed even before the inspector gets to the four on the floor under bar liquor rails, four on the floor under a reach-in cooler and four on the floor in dry storage.
But, at least with the rodents about, they properly washed, rinsed and sanitized everything...or, well, washed and rinsed the dry food storage containers, no sanitizing.
Amigo’s passed the callback inspection.
Antojitos Mexicanos 3, 2491 N. Dixie Hwy., Pompano Beach: Routine inspection, 15 total violations, four High Priority violations.
Putting out roach traps is Step 1. Picking them up when they’ve caught their prey is Step 2.
Antojitos sucked at Step 2. “Approximately seven dead (roaches) on stick paper trap next to the bread crumb storage container in the prep area.”
Perhaps the inspector’s eye got drawn by the twitching of the live roach stuck there. Another live roach crawled on a handwash sink. Another dead roach lay in the door jamb of a kitchen chest freezer.
Cutting boards stored behind faucet of hand sink next to triple sink.
“Ceiling tiles soiled throughout kitchen and prep areas.”
Maybe they came in through the hole in the wall at the kitchen entrance.
If you ate here, hope you took your food home. “Observed employee wash, rinse, and place food utensils to air dry with out sanitizing.”
“Non-food grade paper/paper towel used as liner for food container.” How so? “Dish towels used as a liner and cover for corn tortillas in the bowl in the kitchen.” Ick.
Antojitos passed re-inspection the next day.
CY Chinese Restaurant Szechuan Restaurant, 1242 NE 163rd St., North Miami Beach: Routine inspection, 17 total violations, two High Priority violations.
It was a routine inspection at CY where the inspectors found rodent dung for the fourth time in the last 21 months and the third time in the last four months.
READ MORE: Maybe mice like fried rice: a Miami Chinese restaurant’s 4 inspections with rodent poop
CY eventually passed re-inspection, but has temporarily closed presumably until they can get rid of the small, furry squatters.
Jo Jo’s Raw Bar & Grill, 13889 Wellington Trace, Wellington: Routine inspection, nine total violations, two High Priority violations.
Back in February, Jo Jo’s had too many no-nos, among which were 69 dead roaches
READ MORE: 5 restaurants in a strip mall cited for rodents. Issues from Keys to Miami to Palm Beach
This time, the little dark things on the floor marked not the death of bugs, but regularity from Familia Rodentia — 10 droppings on top of the dishwasher.
There was also a dead roach in a cooler.
“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside.” No kidding.
They passed re-inspection the next day.
New York Pasta Garden, 1075 Duval St., Key West: Routine inspection, 18 total violations, five High Priority violations.
How can you complain about chicken in the kitchen? When the chicken still has feathers, a heartbeat and this isn’t Hialeah or Little Havana.
“Observed 7 chickens inside walking around the kitchen.”
The kitchen stove clearly wasn’t too cool to cook and it wasn’t too hot for more than 25 flies that found it just right for landing. Another 30 flies were in dry storage. But the 15-plus flies in the dough making area rested on the wall, a prep table and touched garlic bites on that table. Stop Sale on the garlic.
Even if you’re only 8 feet above sea level, “standing water throughout the entire establishment” isn’t acceptable.
And, some of that “standing water” wasn’t exactly drinking or swimming quality. “Observed wastewater backing up from the drain in front of the three-compartment sink. Opened multiple faucets and observed water coming up from the drain.”
“Ceiling/ceiling tiles/vents soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance.” Where? “Throughout the kitchen.”
The inside of the microwave was “soiled” as were all the exteriors and gaskets on the reach-in coolers. The reach-in freezer gaskets needed scrubbing, too.
The Garden reopened after passing the callback inspection the next day.
Pukara on the Beach, 241 NE 21st Ave., Deerfield Beach: Routine inspection, seven total violations, two High Priority violations.
Two roaches crawled on the wall and a utensil storage rack and two of their pals moseyed up the wall behind the cookline. Three roach corpses sat on the floor in front of the dishwasher. Inside the dishwasher’s electrical compartment were another 20 dead roaches.
In addition to the ground insects, the ware washing area had 15 flies. A dozen flies were “resting and flying on napkins and shelving at the front counter.” Three flies were “resting on cutting boards stored at the kitchen food prep table.”
“Tiles soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance on the ceiling in front of walk-in cooler in the kitchen.”
The first callback inspection ended with Pukara still closed after 12 live roaches were found in the wheels of reach-in cooler units near the cookline and one roach strolled in front of a kitchen walk-in cooler. The day after 20 roaches were found dead in the dishwasher electrical compartment, 15 roaches joined the death cult via a reach-in cooler’s electrical compartment.
Callback inspection No. 2 went much better.
The Skinny Dip Frozen Yogurt Bar, 3359 Sheridan St., Hollywood: Complaint inspection, 11 total violations, two High Priority violations.
Most of their problems flowed from the fact that a “drain pipe was removed from the handwash sink in the prep area.”
“Hot water turned off at hand wash sink due to missing drain line.”
“The handwash sink in the prep area inoperable due to a missing drain line and the water being turned off. This is only hand wash sink on the plans.”
Doesn’t matter in a practical sense, but in an inspection sense, it’s another violation that if this sink was operational, there were “no paper towels or mechanical hand drying device provided...”
Skinny Dip took care of enough problems to get back open the next day.
Subway, 1105 Royal Palm Beach Blvd., Royal Palm Beach: Routine inspection, four total violations, one High Priority violation.
All about Pixie & Dixie. Six pieces of rodent poop at a closet near the prep area and four under a nearby handwash sink.
Subway must have bused the rodents somewhere, Passed re-inspection the next day.
Texas de Brazil, 2606 Sawgrass Mills Circle, Sunrise: Routine inspection, six total violations, two High Priority violations.
“Customer used a soiled utensil and/or plate to obtain additional food from the self-service salad bar/buffet.”
Ice cream wasn’t covered in freezer, leaving it vulnerable to employee DNA and tomatoes and chimichurri were vulnerable to customer germs because they weren’t “adequately covered under sneeze guard at buffet line.”
About 15 flies used a dry storage shelf as a rest area. Another fly decided to land on a dining table napkin. Five flies hung out on a storage area ceiling.
The grill area handwash sink had soap but the dispenser didn’t work so the soap might as well have been sap.
Texas de Brazil failed inspection on a Friday, but didn’t lose any valuable weekend dinner business after passing one of those Friday same-day re-inspections that seem more popular in Broward.
Wingstop, 3440 NW 79th St., North Miami-Dade: Food Licensing Inspection, eight total violations, two High Priority violations.
The front counter cabinet storing paper and plastic lids had three dead roaches and roach excrement. The front counter had three live roaches.
Boxes of potatoes were stored on the floor next to the walk-in cooler.
Wingstop got its restaurant wings after passing re-inspection the next day.
