MIAMI, FL. Inspectors who walked into Pizzarello Wood Fired Pizza at 11735 SW 147 Ave on July 29 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning no USDA or FDA inspection trail existed for ingredients going into customers' meals.
That single violation, combined with six other high-severity citations, put the wood-fired pizza shop among the more serious inspection findings in Miami-Dade County this year. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The July 29 inspection produced 11 violations in total: 7 high-severity and 4 intermediate. The food sourcing citation was accompanied by a finding that food was not cooked to required minimum temperatures, a combination that compounds risk significantly. Undercooked food from a supplier with no regulatory inspection history removes two of the primary safeguards between a kitchen and a customer's plate.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food areas. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals can contaminate food directly, and in a kitchen environment where products are handled quickly and without always reading labels, the margin for error is narrow.
Inspectors also cited employees for both failing to wash hands adequately and for using improper washing technique. Those are two separate violations, which means the problem was not simply that workers skipped handwashing, but that when they did wash, they did it wrong.
Food contact surfaces, including cutting boards and prep equipment, were found not properly cleaned or sanitized. The intermediate violations added sewage or wastewater disposal problems, improper sanitizer concentration, reuse of single-use items, and inadequate ventilation.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is the one that most limits accountability after the fact. When food comes from an unapproved or unidentified supplier, there is no inspection record, no traceability, and no way to conduct a targeted recall if a customer reports getting sick. Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli have all been linked to uninspected food sources in past Florida outbreak investigations.
The undercooking violation compounds that risk directly. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. In a wood-fired oven environment, temperatures can be uneven and harder to verify than in conventional equipment. Without consistent temperature checks and a verified safe food source, both failure points exist simultaneously.
The handwashing violations matter because they are the most direct route from a sick employee to a customer's food. Improper technique, specifically the second violation cited here, means that even workers who attempted to wash their hands may have left pathogens on their skin. Studies consistently show that handwashing technique failures are as dangerous as skipping handwashing entirely.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is a specific risk to elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and people with compromised immune systems. Without a posted advisory, those customers have no way to make an informed choice about what they order.
The Longer Record
The July 29 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Pizzarello Wood Fired Pizza has been inspected 15 times and has accumulated 118 total violations across its history.
The pattern of high-severity violations runs consistently through the record. In December 2024, inspectors cited the restaurant for 7 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate ones, a tally that matches the July 29 findings exactly. The April 2025 inspection found 3 high-severity violations. The September 2025 inspection found 3 more. The March 2026 inspection found 2 high-severity citations.
A follow-up inspection on August 7, ten days after the July 29 visit, produced 1 high-severity violation and 3 intermediate violations. The most serious issues had been reduced, but the record shows this is a facility that cycles through high violation counts and partial corrections repeatedly. There have been no emergency closures in the facility's history.
The Pattern
Eight inspections since June 2024 have each found at least one high-severity violation. The December 2024 inspection produced the same number of high-severity citations as July 29. The facility has never been ordered closed despite that accumulation.
The 118 violations across 15 inspections average out to nearly 8 per visit. That average includes inspections with lower counts, which means the high-violation visits pull the number significantly upward.
On July 29, a customer ordering a pizza at Pizzarello Wood Fired Pizza had no way to know that the ingredients may have come from a supplier with no regulatory inspection trail, that the food may not have reached a safe internal temperature, that the surfaces used to prepare it had not been properly sanitized, and that the chemicals stored nearby were improperly labeled. The restaurant was open for business.
