Roaches in ice and 330 pieces of rodent poop: the return of restaurant inspection fails
A hole in the wall restaurant with an actual hole in the wall. Mold in one ice machine, roaches in another. Hundreds of pieces of rodent doody.
Gosh, it feels good to be back to bringing you the Sick and Shut Down List of South Florida restaurants that failed inspection.
This actually covers the last three weeks of restaurant inspection failures in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties (Monroe, you folks got off clean). So, let’s get to it.
What follows comes from Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation restaurant inspections. If you have a complaint and want a restaurant inspected, don’t email us. Click here and file a complaint. We don’t decide who gets inspected or how strictly. We report without passion or prejudice, but with a side order of humor.
In alphabetical order:
5th Element Indian Grill, 1325 Powerline Rd., Pompano Beach: And, right out of the box, we’ve got a Wayne Gretzky Award winner, pulling off the living vermin violation hat trick of rodents, roaches and flies.
The roach contribution was light, two in the dining room, one under a soda machine, one under an electric grill. Now, around that soda machine reservoir, 25 flies played Top Gun. Under the soda machine, there were 30 pieces of rodent doo-doo and another 50 under the steel table with the soda machine.
“Approximately 40 rodent droppings behind glasses at the bar. Approximately 15 rodent droppings on food container next to 50-pound flour bags at the end of the hot line in the kitchen.”
The elements got rid of (or hid) the vermin well enough to pass their April 21 re-inspection.
La Granja Chicken Steak And Seafood, 2600 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach: This place had some food handling problems.
They tossed the tres leches and flan kept overnight but not nearly cooled enough — 49 and 50 degrees, when it needed to be 41 or below for safe serving — and the cooked tomatoes at 62 degrees got smashed with a Stop Sale.
Among the products that were out of the safe temperature range and likely would’ve been served that way if not for inspection were grilled chicken; churrasco; raw chicken; seafood mix; and shrimp. Raw chicken that wasn’t commercially packaged was on top of similarly non-packaged beef and bags of cooked yuca. That can spread salmonella better than a knife spreads Jif.
Beans and potatoes cooked days before weren’t date marked.
“Accumulation of black/green mold-like substance in the interior of the ice machine.”
La Granja passed re-inspection April 14.
La Leonesa Fritanga 2, 2361 NW 7th St.: “Observed approximately eight live roaches crawling inside sugar, rice, bean containers.”
Do you really care where the inspector spotted the other 13 live roaches ripping and running through this joint? Well, other than the two on the floor near the chicken base powder.
Incongruously, only the sugar container getting treated like a sandbox by the roach got smacked with a Stop Sale. Makes you feel good about those rice and beans, doesn’t it?
“Displayed food not properly protected from contamination. Uncovered chicken base located cook line.” Is that where those two live roaches were?
A plastic container obstructed the use of the hand wash sink in front of the three-compartment sink and those who worked around that were left with wet hands (no hand towels or blow dryers). We’d be remiss not to mention, “clogged, standing water inside hand wash sink,” on the cookline.
Look up and see the ceiling tile missing. Look over there and see the hole in the wall in the storage area. Look down and see the six dead roaches in the storage area.
La Leonesa got it together to pass Friday’s re-inspection.
Latin Bohemia Grill, 1261 S. Powerline Rd., Pompano Beach: The inspector saw eight dead roaches and 10 live ones, including one inside a reach-in cooler.
Those cleaning hands at the handwashing sink next to the slicer must flap their hands like Koko B. Ware or use a shirt to dry them. They stacked food in a flip top cooler for cooling, which left diced ham; cooked sausage; sliced cheese; and sliced ham too warm to ward off bacteria. The food got unstacked and stored like somebody had some sense of food safety.
This place passed re-inspection on April 21.
MRG (2008-E), 233 S. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton: The inspector saw 22 live roaches and 15 dead ones, but they really broke down into gangs of 10: “10 live roaches in paper bags next to the dry storage area;” “10 live roaches in a box on a storage rack in a hallway towards the office;” “10 dead roaches in a Sterno box on a rack with paper bags.”
MRG cleaned up the roaches (or, at least, got them out of sight) and passed a same-day re-inspection
Ristorante Santucci, 610 Clematis St., West Palm Beach: Seven roaches did not live long or prosper in a Vulcan two-door oven. Two live roaches played inside a Gatland oven. One live roach hung out on a slicer (hope you didn’t order the salami) and 17 — 17! — were in the cookline flip top cooler gaskets, clearly not practicing social distancing.
Despite the block party in the cooler gaskets, what brought down the Stop Sale lightning were three dead roaches in ice machine ice.
With all this roach activity, you want to sanitize your dishes well. “Dishmachine chlorine sanitizer not at proper minimum strength...zero parts per million.”
Oh, well.
Cooked pasta and carrots were stored uncovered in the walk-in cooler. No wonder the roaches loved this place.
Santucci recovered to pass Thursday’s re-inspection.
Seafood Express Garlic Crab House, 4269 NW 12th St., Lauderhill: Seafood Express is this list’s second Wayne Gretzky Award winner for a hat trick of living violations: flies, roaches and rodents.
Among the 60 flies the inspector counted, about 20 used storage room plantains as their landing strip.
Five live roaches and two dead ones make the roaches the Carreras of these vermin. Because the rodents got around.
At 330 drops of rodent dung, maybe it would be easier to say where they didn’t mark their territory than to list places such as shelves with rice and bulgar (100 droppings); a shelf with a cutting machine (10); under a shelf with a cash register by a service area (50); and a shelf by a cash register next to a steam table in the service area (another 50).
Do we really need to get into “single-use gloves not changed as needed after changing tasks or when damaged or soiled,” stained/soiled cutting boards or the handwashing sink covered by a white lid?
Somehow, this place passed a same-day re-inspection on April 22.
Two Brothers Pizzeria, 8424 Mills Dr., Miami: “Observed no hot water at hand wash sinks by three-compartment sink and hand wash sink by front window.”
That’ll do it, even in Kendall. One or both of the brothers got things in order to pass the April 25 re-inspection.
Umberto’s Pizza & Restaurant, 2780 Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Beach: What’s the bigger problem for a pizza place? About 24 live roaches scurrying around, including four on a cookline cutting board? Or the tomato sauce not being kept cool enough for two days, thus getting a Stop Sale to prevent customers getting a bacteria base on their pizza?
Umberto’s had both, thus failing Tuesday’s inspection.
Wednesday, the inspector kept Umberto’s shut, but extended their time to fix things. Thursday, Umberto’s got everything right except the six live roaches and three dead roaches.
On Thursday’s re-re-re-inspection, Umberto’s finally passed and got reopen.
This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 10:40 AM.
