MIRAMAR, FL. A food worker at a Miramar Chinese restaurant was found not reporting symptoms of illness during a July 29 state inspection, one of eight high-severity violations documented at a single visit, and the restaurant was not ordered to close.
The facility, Tien Tien Chinese Food at 9975 Miramar Pkwy, accumulated eight high-priority citations and two intermediate violations during that inspection. The violations ranged from undercooking food to improperly stored toxic chemicals to shellfish with no traceability records.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violation is among the most serious a food service inspector can document. A sick employee continuing to handle food is a direct transmission route for norovirus and other pathogens to every customer served during that shift.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to cook food to required minimum temperatures. Poultry that does not reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit can carry live Salmonella. That violation, combined with improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, creates conditions where contamination can begin in the kitchen and reach a plate without interruption.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. Chemicals stored near food or without clear labeling can cause acute poisoning if they contaminate a surface or ingredient, and the contamination is often invisible until a customer is already sick.
Shellfish sold without proper identification records presents a separate category of risk. Without harvest tags and sourcing documentation, there is no way to trace an oyster or clam back to its harvest bed if a customer becomes ill. That traceability is the only mechanism regulators have to pull contaminated product from circulation quickly.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting failure at Tien Tien is not a paperwork problem. Norovirus spreads through food handled by an infected worker, and a single symptomatic employee working through a busy dinner service can expose dozens of customers. State rules require workers to report symptoms like vomiting or diarrhea to a manager before touching food. That rule exists because the alternative is an outbreak.
Improper handwashing technique compounds that risk. Even when a worker makes the effort to wash their hands, incorrect technique, whether too brief, skipping soap, or not reaching all surfaces, leaves pathogens in place. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, the kitchen at Tien Tien on July 29 had multiple overlapping failure points where bacteria could travel from a surface or a person to a customer's food.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is technical but consequential. Some restaurants are permitted to hold food at room temperature for limited windows instead of refrigerating it, but only if they track time precisely and discard the food at the deadline. When that tracking fails, food sits in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, for an unknown period.
Wiping cloths used improperly, moving between surfaces without sanitizing, effectively redistribute contamination rather than remove it. Multi-use utensils that develop bacterial biofilms are resistant to standard cleaning. Both violations are classified intermediate, but both feed directly into the cross-contamination chain that the high-priority violations above them create.
The Longer Record
The July 29 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Tien Tien Chinese Food has been inspected 27 times and has accumulated 216 total violations across that history, with zero emergency closures.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent across years. The restaurant logged 8 high-priority violations in September 2025 and again in February 2024. It logged 5 high-priority violations in December 2025, again in December 2025 at a follow-up visit two weeks later, and again in July 2024. The category of violations has not meaningfully changed.
No inspection in the past three years produced a clean record. The February 2026 visit, five months before this one, found 3 high-priority and 2 intermediate violations. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed despite this accumulation.
Still Open
Eight high-severity violations in a single inspection is the kind of total that, at other Broward County restaurants, has preceded an emergency closure order. At Tien Tien on July 29, it did not.
The restaurant's 27-inspection record includes two separate visits with identical eight-high-violation totals, the one this July and one in February 2024. Neither triggered a closure. The 216 violations on record span years of inspections that have documented undercooking, illness-reporting failures, and chemical storage problems in overlapping combinations.
As of the July 29 inspection, Tien Tien Chinese Food remained open for business.
