Roaches in a pan of food and other Miami, Broward and Palm Beach restaurant filth
Lessons about a Bain Marie, the three-compartment sink and which places had problems with rodent excrement and roach excrement all are packed into this week’s Sick and Shut Down List of restaurants that failed inspection.
So, let’s get to it.
This, the only list covering Miami-Dade, Monroe, Broward and Palm Beach, is completely reactive. We don’t decide who gets inspected. We don’t file complaints with the state, even when we go into a McDonald’s on Northwest Seventh Street with no soap in the restroom handwash sink and urine spots on the floor.
In alphabetical order...
Argentina Grill/TG of Sawgrass, Sawgrass Mills mall, 12801 Sunrise Blvd., Sunrise: Routine inspection, nine total violations, three High Priority violations.
First violation listed on the first restaurant alphabetically brings back a Sick and Shut Down List staple, “accumulation of black/green mold-like substance in the interior of the ice machine/bin.”
No paper towels or blowers at the handwash sink, so I guess folks have to flap around like Koko B. Ware.
Two flies were coming down on a shelf with clean utensils, another one landing on a clean cutting board and another landing on a clean service pan above the three-compartment sink were among the eight flies the inspector counted.
There were two dead roaches in a box. Numerous live roaches lived outside the box.
Inside a box covering a printer in a rear prep area lay two dead roaches. The box also had six live roaches. Nearby, another four roaches crawled from the printer, which was above the food prep utensils. Another two roaches “crawled on soy sauce bottles above the prep table.”
An employee killed a roach crawling on the prep table plastic wrap. Hope he tossed the plastic wrap with the roach.
The Grill was cooking again after passing the next day’s comeback inspection.
Asian Chao, 801 N. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach: Routine inspection, 12 total violations, six High Priority violations.
Clearly the Roach Motels work, as the inspector counted 20 dead bodies in the roach trap next to a hot water heater. But, the whole idea is catch, kill and release into the garbage, not leave them there for the inspector to find and count.
Another two dead roaches were under the front counter Bain Marie.
(Digression: What’s a “Bain Marie?” Well, we know or Google so you don’t have to do so and this is also called a “double boiler.” It’s a pan with hot water into which a smaller pan with the food is placed. The Spruce Eats says it’s used for cooking “delicate foods, such as custards. The purpose of a bain-marie is that it creates a gentle heat around the food and results in a uniform cooking process.” Digression done.)
Before we get to the live roaches, let’s talk about the manager who “handled dead roaches and then handled clean kitchen utensils” without washing hands and the employee who “returned from the bathroom proceeded to the kitchen and touched clean containers” without washing hands.
OK, there was no soap at the kitchen handwash sink, but does it look like that was unusual?
Back to the roaches, the living kind. Three of them were under a rice cooker. Five under the wok station. Five “inside electrical outlets above the prep table.” The inspector saw five others.
After counting roaches, the inspector dropped a Stop Sale on cooked noodles stored in the walk-in cooler overnight and still measuring above 41 degrees.
Asian Chao almost made it on the first return inspection, but for a “live roach on a wall near a prep table.”
That roach must have been on break during the second re-inspection, which Asian Chao passed.
La Vina Aragon, 8155 W Eighth Ave., Hialeah: Routine inspection, 10 total violations, three High Priority violations.
Perhaps you’ve seen references to the three-compartment sink and wondered, like the Bain Marie above, “What the heck is a three-compartment sink and why does it have three compartments?”
The three-compartment sink is used for washing, rinsing and sanitizing cookware by hand. When La Vina’s folks got to that sanitation step, they were just playing because the chlorine sanitizer measured zero parts per million.
Some cookware, pots, were cleaned and sanitized. But, they were stored on the floor under a prep table, so that took away the sanitized, if not the cleaned, also.
Meanwhile, under the three-compartment sink, eight live roaches played a little four-on-four.
La Vina passed re-inspection the next day.
Larb BKK, 6234 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale: Routine inspection, 15 total violations, seven High Priority violations.
“In-use tongs stored on equipment door handle between uses on the cookline.” Not as bad as shoving it between equipment or between a stove and a counter, our pet peeve here at the Sick and Shut Down List, but it’s still not the way you store things being used to touch food.
The inspector counted 35 flies in the back kitchen prep area and another 15 on shelves above the dishwasher that had clean pots.
“Dry storage shelves covered with visibly soiled cardboard.”
Between the back room handwash sink being “blocked with large buckets” and lacking any way to dry your hands, it’s clearly not a popular destination.
Larb came up large on the next day’s re-inspection to reopen.
The Original Pancake House, 7720 W. Boynton Beach Blvd., Unincorporated Palm Beach County: Complaint inspection, seven total violations, four High Priority violations.
Again, if you have roach traps or roach motels, you have to evict the victims periodically so the inspector doesn’t count 10 dead roaches inside three of the traps. Of the other 17 dead bugs, one was on a prep table next to a slicer, five were inside drawers under a flat top unit on the cookline, another five were inside a two-door flip top cooler “holding pans and non-temperature controlled for safety, ready-to-eat foods.”
One of those roach traps had two live roaches. Of the 12 other roaches strewn around the place, the one that grabbed everyone’s attention was the one “inside a pan of food left inside not-in-use drawers” on the cookline.
The inspector also spotted an “accumulation of roach droppings behind a hook holding to-go bags at the coffee station in front of the cookline, not in the kitchen.”
The Original Pancake House scared the roaches away or pumped them full of blueberry pancakes so they stayed asleep behind the walls — and passed inspection the next day.
Ten Ten Seafood and Dim Sum, 10101 Sunset Strip, Sunrise: Complaint inspection, 16 total violations, five High Priority violations.
Earlier this week, we told you about the inspector finding that only Ten Ten’s rodent problem outstripped its mold problem.
READ MORE: An inspector counted 37 mice droppings and 27 rat droppings at Sunrise’s Ten Ten
Ten Ten, miraculously, passed re-inspection the next day.
