Roaches, bad handwashing and unsafe food in a Miami Beach restaurant, inspection says
When a state inspector wasn’t counting running roaches at a Miami Beach hotel lobby restaurant last week, the inspector made it rain Stop Sale orders on enough food to fill a Yogi Bear beach picnic basket.
Those and 23 other violations, five of which were High Priority, closed The Paradise Cafe in the Holiday Inn Miami Beach-Oceanfront, 4333 Collins Ave. One day became two when the inspector returned on Tuesday and saw that though the restaurant was “conducting cleaning and extermination, there still two live roaches crawling on the kitchen floor.”
Paradise passed a second callback inspection on Wednesday. The restaurant was open Monday, Feb. 10, serving with a band of power tools playing construction work music nearby.
What the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation inspector saw on Feb. 3 seemed a bigger problem than anything heard.
READ MORE: Fly on tofu, live rodent on trap — how 8 Miami metro area restaurants failed inspection
“Accumulation of black/green mold-like substance in the interior of the ice machine/bin.”
Seven roaches died on a kitchen shelf with bottles of sauce.
Happier were the “seven live roaches in the middle of the kitchen area crawling up a column located behind a prep table” and the “three live roaches crawling on the floor in the dry storage.”
Also, there was an “accumulation of mold-like substance on the reach-in cooler gaskets,” an “accumulation of grease on most of the exterior surfaces of the kitchen equipment” and an “accumulation of debris on the can opener.”
There was an “accumulation of food debris and grease underneath and behind the kitchen equipment” and an “accumulation of grease and food residue on the walls.”
MORE: Florida hotels might’ve gotten Italian mini pastries from Canada in salmonella outbreak
An employee worked with food, cleaned, then worked with food again without the handwashing step.
The kitchen handwash sink didn’t have any way to dry hands. The lobby bar handwash sink didn’t have any soap. The handwash sink next to the ice machine didn’t have hot water.
And the handwash sink next to the oven had a leak.
.jpg%20The%20Paradise%20Cafe "IMG_7602 (1).jpg The Paradise Cafe")
Two reach-in coolers with the job of keeping sensitive food at or under 41 degrees couldn’t get it down, measuring 48 and 49 degrees. The food inside the coolers, even after four hours, measured a dangerous 47 degrees to 55 degrees.
So a swarm of Stop Sales hit the food, and into the trash went sliced tomatoes, regular hummus, roasted red pepper hummus, raw eggs, egg whites, half and half cream, steak, salmon, ham, turkey, shrimp, cooked pasta, cooked onions, pico de gallo, cheddar cheese, and cheese pizza. All had been in the coolers for more than four hours.
