MIAMI, FL. State inspectors visited Reys Pizza #6 on SW 137th Avenue on August 17, 2026, and documented that food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures, a violation that means pathogens like Salmonella can survive in the finished product and reach a customer's plate.
That was one of eight high-severity violations inspectors cited that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking citation was not the only finding that put customers in direct contact with potential harm. Inspectors also documented that food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment that touches food before it reaches a plate, were not being properly cleaned or sanitized. That failure creates a direct pathway for bacteria from one food item to contaminate the next.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. A mislabeled or misplaced chemical container in a working kitchen is not a paperwork problem. It is a route to acute poisoning.
Inspectors further documented that employees were not washing their hands adequately, that at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms, and that the location had no written employee health policy at all. The shell stock records for shellfish on hand were inadequate, meaning there was no reliable way to trace where the oysters, clams, or mussels had come from. There was also no consumer advisory posted to warn customers that raw or undercooked items were on the menu.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of undercooking and unsanitized food contact surfaces found at Reys Pizza #6 represents compounding risk, not isolated incidents. When food is pulled from heat before reaching the minimum safe temperature, pathogens like Salmonella in poultry are not killed. When the surfaces that touched that food are not sanitized between uses, those same pathogens transfer to the next item prepared, regardless of how well that item is cooked.
The handwashing and illness-reporting failures add a second transmission route on top of the first. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, spreads most efficiently through the hands of infected food workers. A facility with no written health policy and employees not reporting symptoms has removed the first line of defense against a worker who is sick and contagious handling food for customers.
The shellfish traceability failure carries its own distinct risk. Shellfish are often consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without proper shell stock tags and records, there is no way to identify the harvest source if a customer becomes ill. If a contaminated batch of oysters sickens multiple people, investigators need those records to trace and stop the source. Without them, the investigation starts blind.
The chemical storage violation is the most immediately dangerous in a different way. A chemical that is mislabeled or stored where it can contact food does not cause gradual illness. It causes acute poisoning, sometimes within minutes of ingestion.
The Longer Record
The August 17 inspection was not an anomaly. It was the seventh time in eight inspection cycles that Reys Pizza #6 accumulated five or more high-severity violations in a single visit.
State records show 26 inspections on file for this location, with 296 total violations documented across that history. The most recent prior inspection, on April 28, 2026, produced eight high-severity violations and six intermediate violations, an identical high-severity count to the August visit. The inspection before that, on February 23, 2026, found two high-severity violations. The one before that, on August 13, 2025, found eleven.
The single clean inspection in this run, a visit on August 19, 2025, came six days after that eleven-violation inspection, suggesting it was a follow-up that confirmed corrections had been made. The pattern that follows is the more telling one: five high-severity violations in February 2025, six in November 2024, five in March 2024, five in August 2023.
The location has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history on record.
Open for Business
The violations documented on August 17 included failures across nearly every category that state inspectors treat as highest priority: cooking temperatures, surface sanitation, hand hygiene, illness reporting, chemical storage, and shellfish traceability. Eight of the nine citations were high-severity.
Inspectors left, and Reys Pizza #6 remained open.
