LAKE WORTH, FL. Brass Monkey Sports Bar and Grill on Lake Worth Road was ordered closed by state inspectors on May 26 after they documented both roach activity and rodent activity inside the restaurant, triggering an emergency shutdown and an order to vacate the premises by the following day.
It was the third time this year inspectors had shut the place down for pests.
What Inspectors Found
Brass Monkey Sports Bar: 2026 Closure History
The May 26 inspection recorded three high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. The closure order cited both roach and rodent activity, meaning inspectors documented evidence of two distinct pest infestations on the same visit.
The restaurant was ordered vacated by May 27. A follow-up inspection that morning found zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations, and Brass Monkey was permitted to reopen at 9:16 a.m.
The Pattern
This was not an isolated finding.
State records show Brass Monkey was emergency-closed on March 24 for roach activity and allowed to reopen the next day. Less than a month later, on April 20, inspectors returned and found roach activity again, triggering a second emergency closure. That inspection also produced five high-severity violations and three intermediate violations, the most severe single-day tally in the recent record.
The April 20 closure required two separate follow-up inspections on April 21 before the restaurant could reopen. Even after those visits, the combined record for that day still showed two high-severity and three intermediate violations across both follow-ups.
Between the March and May closures, inspectors also visited on April 1 and March 25, finding high-severity violations on both occasions.
In the span of roughly ten weeks, from March 24 through May 26, state inspectors documented high-severity violations at Brass Monkey on at least six separate inspection dates.
What This Means
Roach and rodent activity are among the conditions that trigger automatic emergency closure under Florida food safety rules, and for direct reasons. Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and legs, depositing those pathogens on food-contact surfaces, utensils, and food itself as they move through a kitchen. A customer eating at a table has no way to know whether the plate in front of them was prepared on a surface a roach crossed hours earlier.
Rodents compound the risk. Rodent droppings and urine contaminate surfaces and can transmit diseases including leptospirosis and hantavirus. Unlike a temperature violation that can be corrected by adjusting a cooler setting, pest infestations require extermination, deep cleaning, and sealing of entry points. The fact that Brass Monkey passed its May 27 follow-up with zero high-severity violations shows that rapid remediation is possible. The fact that it had to be done three times in ten weeks raises a different question.
When the same pest-related violation triggers closure, remediation, and reopening, only for inspectors to find pest activity again weeks later, it points to a facility that is treating the symptom rather than the source. Each of the three closures at Brass Monkey this year was preceded by a clean or near-clean follow-up inspection, yet the underlying condition returned.
The Longer Record
Brass Monkey Sports Bar and Grill has accumulated 171 violations across 33 inspections on record, a rate that works out to roughly five violations per inspection visit on average. The three emergency closures in 2026 are all documented in that history, and all three share the same cause: pest activity.
The inspection record going back through early 2026 shows no stretch longer than a few weeks without a high-severity violation appearing. The March 24 closure, the April 20 closure, and the May 26 closure each followed inspections where high-severity violations had already been documented, meaning inspectors were not encountering a facility in good standing when they ordered it closed.
The April 20 inspection, which produced five high-severity violations and three intermediate ones, stands as the single worst day in the recent record. That visit came less than four weeks after the first closure and less than five weeks before the third.
A facility with 33 inspections on record and three emergency closures all tied to the same category of violation, pests, is not a facility that has been surprised by these findings. The record shows inspectors have been documenting the problem in various forms across multiple visits, and the restaurant has repeatedly cleared the bar to reopen, only to face the same order again.
The May 27 follow-up showed zero violations, and Brass Monkey was open again before 10 a.m. Whether the underlying pest conditions that triggered three shutdowns in ten weeks have been fully resolved is not something a single clean inspection can confirm.