500 pieces of roach poop at a Coral Gables restaurant. See inspection fallout
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Roaches, flies, foul odors: 2025’s Coral Gables area restaurant inspection fails
In 2025, state inspectors repeatedly found Coral Gables area restaurants falling short of “The City Beautiful” municipal motto.
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A few roaches and hundreds of pieces of roach excrement shut down a Coral Gables ramen restaurant after an inspection last week, and the business stayed closed after a re-inspection.
Ichimi Ramen Bar, 2330 Salzedo St., passed a third inspection. It’s the eighth restaurant in or across the street from Coral Gables to get shut down by state inspectors in 2025.
Few of those places, however, managed to rack up 30 total violations or nine High Priority violations on a routine inspection.
READ MORE: 450 rodent droppings among the worst South Florida restaurant inspections
The “accumulation of debris inside the warewashing machine” was matched by an “accumulation of debris on the exterior of the warewashing machine,” most notably, “approximately 200 roach droppings on top of the dishwasher machine.”
After that count, the inspector counted 300 roach droppings “all over the kitchen and cookline.” Another 50 were in the gaskets of a cookline reach-in cooler.
Neither the three live roaches and one dead roach by an electric panel nor the three crawling by pots in the storage area had the impact of one “live roach inside an MSG bag in the storage area.”
There also were other issues with food.
A cookline unit had noodles, tofu, mussels and fish sauce that measured 50 degrees. They needed to be at or under 41 degrees. A quartet of Stop Sales came down on the items.
Cutting tables and cookline food containers qualified to be “food-contact surfaces soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime.”
The “soiled” cookline cutting boards got washed, but not sanitized.
A kitchen employee went from working with “soiled equipment” to “clean items”,then “manipulated food” all without washing hands.
In the dishwashing area, the handwash sink managed a hat trick of “No” — No hot water, No soap, No paper towels.
“Utensils soiled with old food debris” on the cookline hadn’t been cleaned every four hours as required.
An “in-use utensil was stored in unclean water at or above 135 degrees.”
The walls in the cookline, dishwashing area and prep area were “soiled with old food debris.”
The stove was “soiled with a heavy amount of old food and grease.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2025 at 5:19 AM.
