Bad restaurant inspections: Rodents at a Miami club, Miami Beach and Palm Beach roaches
Four restaurants serving four different cuisines amid roaches, wastewater or rodent poop make up this week’s Sick and Shut Down List of Miami metropolitan area restaurants that have failed inspection.
For the second consecutive week, Broward comes out clean. Monroe, too. Miami-Dade and Palm Beach? This week’s list is you all day.
A quick reminder: We neither select the restaurants to be inspected nor do we do the inspecting. Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation personnel do that. Dissatisfied diners can file a complaint with that agency.
In alphabetical order:
AKO Prime, 5005 Collins Ave., Miami Beach: Complaint inspection, 54 total violations, nine High Priority violations.
Earlier this week, we told you about the delivery/takeout kosher restaurant in the Carriage Club North condominium with running roaches, hand-washing deficiencies and employees who couldn’t explain how to properly clean and sanitize dishes.
READ MORE: A Miami Beach restaurant’s 54 problems included kitchen roaches, a ‘mold-like substance’
AKO Prime’s re-inspection got it back open despite 32 violations.
Big Five Club, 600 SW 92nd Ave., West Miami-Dade: Routine inspection, 17 total violations, four High Priority violations.
The Big Five Club’s website says its 1968 formation brought together “the members of the Havana’s five most prestigious Clubs — Havana Yacht Club, Vedado Tennis Club, Casino Español, Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club and Miramar Yacht Club.”
It also says, “Our club offers a wide array of sports activities for children and adults alike. We offer dominoes and card games as well as a busy calendar of social and cultural events.”
What it also offered, until the inspector hit them with Stop Sales, were flan, cooked pork, cooked beef, cooked chicken, chicken salad, tuna salad and butter all well above safe temperature (41 degrees or under) after four hours in the main walk-in. All of that, basura.
The main dishwasher and another one offered no chlorine for sanitizing. On top of that — literally on top of the dishwasher — sat three rodent droppings. Over seven pieces of rodent poo sat under the dishwasher.
“Certified food manager unable to answer basic Food Code questions pertaining to safe operation of the establishment.”
In the cold holding unit across from the cookline, over six dead roaches met their final fate.
The outside bar didn’t have a handwash sink and, at the inside bar’s handwash sink, you could get your hands wet. You couldn’t wash them (no soap) or dry them (no paper towels or electric blower).
The Big Five measured up to the next day’s re-inspection.
La Condesa Mexican Restaurant, 3320 Airport Rd., Boca Raton: Routine inspection, 15 total violations, seven High Priority violations.
Six roaches walked “on the wall at the clean utensils rack” and a lone live roach walked alone next to the paper towel dispenser” at the back of the kitchen.
“Multiple walls throughout the restaurant are soiled.”
“Equipment and utensils not properly air-dried — wet nesting” on an air drying rack. This usually means the cookware isn’t properly inverted to allow water to run off, but placed so that water pools.
“Observed unwashed cucumbers stored over ready-to-eat green peppers.”
Stop Sales crashed down on four dented cans of caramel toppings.
La Condesa passed the callback inspection.
Souvlaki Fast, 1250 Royal Palm Beach Blvd., Royal Palm Beach: Routine inspection, six total violations, three High Priority violations.
A dented can of dolmades got a Stop Sale. An employee drink stored in the ice machine ice necessitated all that ice being thrown out because you don’t know where the outside of that can — or the hand holding that can — has been.
But, the problem that got the Greek restaurant in Dutch, was “wastewater surfaces through the drains when any of the sinks in the establishment are turned on and in use for a short duration of time.”
Souvlaki was back in business after the next day’s re-inspection.
