HIALEAH, FL. State inspectors ordered Café Enclave at 524 W 27th Street closed on August 3 after documenting rodent activity inside the restaurant, a finding serious enough to require the facility to vacate by the following morning.
The closure was not the first. State records show Café Enclave has been emergency-closed before, making the August 3 shutdown the second time inspectors have determined the restaurant posed an immediate risk to the public.
What Inspectors Found
Café Enclave: Inspection Severity Over Time
The August 3 inspection produced 6 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations. Rodent activity was the finding that triggered the closure order, a classification inspectors reserve for conditions that present an immediate threat to public health.
The facility was given until August 4 to vacate. A follow-up inspection that same day, August 4, found zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations. The restaurant reopened at 9:55 a.m.
What This Means
Rodent activity in a food service facility is not a paperwork violation. Rodents, primarily rats and mice, carry pathogens including Salmonella, Leptospira, and Hantavirus, and they deposit urine and feces on food preparation surfaces, in dry storage areas, and on equipment that contacts food directly.
Unlike a cracked floor tile or a missing label, rodent activity cannot be corrected with a quick fix during the inspection itself. It requires pest control intervention, a thorough cleaning of contaminated surfaces, and a follow-up inspection to confirm the facility is no longer a public health risk. That is why Florida law authorizes inspectors to order an immediate closure rather than issue a citation and move on.
The risk to customers is direct. Food that has been contaminated by rodent activity may show no visible sign of spoilage. A customer eating at Café Enclave on August 3 before the closure order was issued had no way of knowing rodent activity had been documented inside the kitchen.
The fact that the facility cleared its follow-up inspection in under 24 hours is notable, but it does not erase what inspectors found the day before.
The Pattern
The August closure did not arrive without warning. State records show Café Enclave has accumulated 254 violations across 26 inspections, a volume that places it well outside the range of a facility with isolated or occasional compliance problems.
The most severe single inspection in the facility's recent history came on December 29, 2025, when inspectors documented 10 high-severity violations and 7 intermediate violations in a single visit. That is 17 violations of the two most serious classification levels recorded in one day. A follow-up inspection the next day, December 30, found 2 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations still present.
October 22, 2025 produced 9 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate violations. That inspection came less than two months before the December spike.
The pattern continued into 2026. On March 6, inspectors returned and documented 6 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, March 7, still found 1 high-severity violation and 3 intermediate violations outstanding.
In each of these inspection cycles, the facility cleared enough violations to remain open, or to reopen after a short closure. Then, within weeks or months, inspectors returned to find high-severity violations again.
The Longer Record
Twenty-six inspections and 254 total violations place Café Enclave in a category that goes beyond routine compliance difficulty. A facility with that volume of documented violations over its inspection history has been cited, corrected, and cited again, repeatedly, across multiple inspection cycles.
This is the second time the facility has been emergency-closed. The first closure is part of the state record. The August 3 shutdown is the second, and it follows a stretch of inspections, from June 2025 through March 2026, in which the facility never once produced a clean high-severity result. Every inspection in that window found at least one high-severity violation. Three of those inspections found six or more.
The August 4 follow-up inspection found zero violations at either the high-severity or intermediate level, and the restaurant reopened the same morning. Whether the conditions that produced 254 violations across 26 inspections have been durably addressed is a question the next routine inspection will answer.
That inspection has not yet occurred.
