See some of the 23 inspection violations that closed a Coral Gables restaurant
Lack of proper handwashing, some from a lack of hot water, led a state inspector to shut down a Coral Gables restaurant last week.
Inside the commercial building at the corner of Ponce de Leon and Alcazar Avenue, you’ll find Al’s Coffee Shop, a Monday-through-Friday place just like most of its white collar clientele. Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation records say Al’s got forced into two days off by a routine inspection that turned up 23 violations, including three High Priority ones.
After the failed inspection on Monday, Sept. 22, Al’s reopened Sept. 24 after passing re-inspection.
What follows are some of the violations listed:
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The slicer at the food prep area was “soiled with food debris.”
The “cutting board has cut marks and is no longer cleanable.”
“Employees at the cookline were working without hair restraints.”
Most of the equipment in the kitchen and prep area had “soiled” gaskets and handles.
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That’s a problem by itself, but also when cookline employees were seen “touching soiled equipment like handles and gaskets for reach-in coolers, the stove or the toaster and getting back to work without handwashing and changing gloves.”
This gets into handwashing violations, such as “the handwash sink was removed from food preparation/dishwashing area ... the handwash sink from the back/ prep/ storage area has been removed. According to the operator, the handwash sink was removed before they took the place.”
The license for Al’s, held by GB Two Business, was granted at this location on June 2, 2023.
The only handwash sink in the place, the kitchen handwash sink, was “lacking hot/cold water.” With that shut down, “the only handwash sink available is in the building’s restroom, located approximately at 70 feet from the kitchen.”
Even still, the inspector “observed a water line connecting the coffee machine with the handwash sink to obtain water to operate the machine.”
“The three-compartment sink is the only fixture with water but with weak pressure” and what little flowed, flowed at only 74 degrees. Room temperature doesn’t count as hot water.
Though the handwash sink wasn’t working, the inspector still noted a lack of paper towels or mechanical blower for drying hands.
Al’s also fell below snuff on proper food safety storage with cheese (57 degrees), cut tomatoes (57) and ham (50), all well above the maximum 41 degrees they needed to be for safe keeping. So, the inspector dropped one, two, three Stop Sales, and the ham, cheese and tomatoes became basura.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 9:44 AM.
