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Live flies had themselves a feast ahead of the Valentine’s Day holiday, landing on sliced tomatoes, bags of onions and on a stove-top pot filled with cream at seven restaurants ordered temporarily shut by state inspectors last week.
The restaurants red-flagged this week are Oka Sushi & Thai in Lake Worth Beach, Will’s Cafe Creole Restaurant in North Lauderdale, Kabayan Oriental Mart in Loxahatchee, Plaza Diner in Miramar, Wayback Burgers in Coconut Creek, Hotdog-Opolis in Boca Raton and Favor Sushi in Pompano Beach.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel highlights restaurant inspections in Broward and Palm Beach counties from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. We cull through hundreds of restaurant and bar inspections that happen weekly and spotlight places ordered shut for “high-priority violations,” like improper food temperatures or dead cockroaches.
Sun Sentinel readers can browse full Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county reports on our state inspection map, updated weekly (usually Monday) with fresh data pulled from the Florida DBPR website.
Any restaurant that fails inspections must stay closed until it passes a follow-up state inspection. If you spotted a possible violation and wish to file a complaint, contact Florida DBPR here. (But don’t contact us: The Sun Sentinel doesn’t inspect restaurants.)
Oka Sushi & Thai, Lake Worth Beach
Ordered shut: Feb. 10, reopened Feb. 11
Why: Seven violations (three high priority), such as five live cockroaches found crawling “on trash can dolly underneath” the kitchen sink, along with 14 rodent droppings discovered “on floor behind ice machine,” behind the cooler at the kitchen cooking station, and “in small hard-to-reach area under sushi bar.” (The manager later sanitized these areas.) Inspectors also found a pair of dead roaches “on the floor between sushi bar and menu rack in the dining room.” The sushi house was allowed to reopen Feb. 11 when the follow-up inspection revealed one minor issue.
Will’s Cafe Creole Restaurant, North Lauderdale
5460 N. State Road 7, Suite 104
Ordered shut: Feb. 10, reopened Feb. 11
Why: 17 violations (seven high priority), led by this: Six live cockroaches found “crawling inside cabinets” at the restaurant’s front counter, “crawling on the floor” near the kitchen sink and “on dining room floor.” Inspectors also ordered the restaurant to stop selling and trash its “cashews, peanuts, bread, fried chips and sesame pies” because they were “made from home” and brought into the restaurant, and to toss a container filled with pork “due to temperature abuse.” The state also discovered several “containers of rice, flour and sugar with no labeling,” and ordered the restaurant to throw out a bottle of crema — an alcoholic beverage — “with no warning label and from unapproved source.” The restaurant reopened the next day after state inspectors discovered a single minor issue.
Kabayan Oriental Mart, Loxahatchee
Why: Six violations (five high priority), including 160 live flies “landing on a pot with cream on the stove top, microwave, container with coconut, clean utensils all over the kitchen area,” and landing “on a container with bananas on top of reach-in freezer” in the dining room. The restaurant was also ordered to stop selling and toss its cooked pork and butter “due to temperature abuse.” The state has not yet posted a report of its follow-up inspection.
Ordered shut: Feb. 10, reopened Feb. 14
Why: Inspectors found a whopping 34 violations (six high priority), led by 10 live cockroaches “under stove at cook line, under reach-in freezers and coolers in the kitchen, [and] under prep table at cook line.” The state also discovered 25 dead roaches in the same kitchen areas as well as under the kitchen storage shelves, under the kitchen stove and “on the floor at the front counter.” Inspectors also ordered the restaurant to trash its sausage, beef franks, gravy, ham, cooked spinach, turkey sausage, chicken soup, diced cooked potatoes and a variety of cheese “due to temperature abuse.” Despite finding 12 more major violations during its second visit, including mislabeled food and more dead roaches, the state let the diner reopen Feb. 14.
Wayback Burgers, Coconut Creek
4690 N. State Road 7, Suite 103
Why: 18 violations (five high priority), such as 127 live flies “landing on cut tomatoes” in the kitchen’s flip-top cooler – the tomatoes were also ordered to be thrown out, naturally – as well as landing on “bags containing onions in prep area,” “on clean prep tables” and “on box containing raw ground beef” stored near the kitchen sink. Inspectors also found one dead roach “in cupboard underneath the Coca-Coca” soda fountain in the dining room. The restaurant also was ordered to stop selling and toss its raw chicken “due to temperature abuse.” The state has not yet posted a report of its follow-up inspection. In December, the Sun Sentinel reported the hamburger joint had also been ordered shut twice, on Nov. 30 and Dec. 6.
Hotdog-Opolis, Boca Raton
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Ordered shut: Feb. 8, reopened Feb. 9
Why: Three violations (one high priority), such as 33 rodent droppings “observed inside box of maintenance equipment located inside” the air-conditioning closet next to the front counter, on the ground in the closet, “on floor under [kitchen] prep table” and “on box of bottled beverages.” The restaurant owner sanitized the areas during the inspectors’ visit. The restaurant reopened the following day after inspectors discovered a minor issue.
Favor Sushi, Pompano Beach
Why: Five violations (four high priority), including seven live cockroaches found “in kitchen under the rice cooker in prep area” and in the kitchen beneath the doors of the reach-in cooler. State inspectors also spotted 14 dead roaches in the same kitchen areas as the live ones. The state has not yet posted a report of its follow-up inspection.
