An inspector found hand washing and coffee issues at ‘cake artist’ near Coral Gables
Combining various hand-washing problems with “bare hand contact with ready-to-eat foods” didn’t help a longtime popular Miami-Dade cake maker with a state inspection Friday.
You can’t get a lower result from Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors than “Re-Inspection Required,” which is what Sweet Art Cakes Miami The Original Cake Artist received on Thursday. Inspectors James Zheng and Julio Azpura also dropped a couple of Stop-Use Orders at the custom cake maker at 7120 Bird Road, a mile and a half west of Coral Gables.
Sweet Art has been in business since 1979, originally as Lucila Jimenez’s Sweet Art by Lucila. Current owner Esther Rieumont became half owner of the business in 2013 and remains as the only officer listed in state records.
Here’s some of what the inspectors found during Friday’s visit.
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▪ “No certified food protection manager available at the establishment.”
▪ “Ceiling vent with accumulated dust above the ware washing and preparation areas.”
▪ In the backroom, a food employee was spotted “rinsing hands with cold water before drying hands.” The person was sent back to wash hands with soap and hot water.
▪ A worker was “using bare hands to manipulate ready-to-eat baked cake for packaging.” Bare hands on ready-to-eat is a no-no.
▪ A floor stand mixer blocked the way to a backroom handwash sink.
▪ The handwash sink next to the warewash sink didn’t have any soap or hot water. The employee unisex restroom handwash sink didn’t have any hot water, either. A warewash sink is a three-compartment sink used in commercial kitchens.
While a valve turn produced hot water for the former, that remedy didn’t work for the latter. Sweet Art has until Feb. 4 to get hot water for the employee restroom.
▪ There was a direct connection between the sewage system and a warewash sink drain. That’s not acceptable. If there’s a sewage backup, an indirect connection protects the sink and anything in it.
▪ “Employees with no effective hair restraint and working with open foods.”
▪ “Multiple employees found engaging in food preparation with personal jewelry.”
▪ “No chlorine sanitizer test strips are available...to accurately measure the concentration of the sanitizing solution.”
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▪ Water leaked from “a joint in the hot water supply line underneath a handwashing sink” in the backroom.
▪ Water from the Pilon espresso machine was “draining directly into a bucket.”
▪ The espresso machine steaming wand, used for heating up milk, was washed and rinsed, but not sanitized as required.
▪ There wasn’t a handwashing sink “for employees to wash their hands before making coffee” at the espresso machine. So, Stop-Use Orders came down on the equipment in the area, the espresso machine and the Mazzer Luigi coffee grinder.
▪ “No probe thermometer was available” for measuring food temperature.
