NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors ordered CM Chicken at 1256 NE 163 St shut down on August 19, 2026, after documenting both roach and rodent activity inside the restaurant, a combination that triggered an immediate emergency closure order.
The facility was given until August 20 to vacate. Records show it did reopen, with inspectors clearing it at 10:04 a.m. following a reinspection.
What Inspectors Found
Both live roach activity and rodent activity were documented inside CM Chicken on the same inspection visit, triggering an immediate emergency closure order.
The closure was triggered by a dual pest finding: active roach activity and active rodent activity documented during the same inspection visit. That combination is among the most serious conditions Florida inspectors can cite.
Roach and rodent infestations do not typically appear overnight. Both require time, harborage, and a food source to establish. Finding both on a single visit signals conditions that had been developing inside the kitchen.
The state ordered the restaurant vacated by August 20. It was cleared to reopen after a reinspection the following morning.
What This Means
Live roach and rodent activity inside a food preparation environment represents a direct contamination risk to every surface, utensil, and ingredient in the kitchen. Roaches carry pathogens including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria on their bodies and deposit them on food contact surfaces as they move through a kitchen at night.
Rodents present a separate and compounding hazard. Rodent droppings, urine, and hair can contaminate food directly. Rodents also gnaw through packaging, exposing stored ingredients to further contamination. When a customer eats food prepared in a kitchen with active rodent activity, they have no way of knowing what surfaces or ingredients were compromised before cooking began.
Florida law treats simultaneous roach and rodent findings as grounds for immediate emergency closure precisely because neither pest can be eliminated with a single cleaning. Pest control professionals must treat, trap, and verify eradication before a facility can safely reopen. The reinspection clearance at 10:04 a.m. on August 20 indicates CM Chicken completed that process within roughly 24 hours.
That timeline is fast. Whether the underlying conditions that allowed both pest populations to establish were fully addressed in that window is a question the next routine inspection will answer.
The Longer Record
State records show no prior inspections on file for CM Chicken at this address. There are no previously documented violations and no prior emergency closures in the inspection database.
That absence of history cuts two ways. It means there is no documented pattern of escalating violations leading to this closure, no prior warnings about pest activity that went unaddressed, and no history of inspectors flagging conditions that later worsened. On that basis, this closure cannot be characterized as the end result of a long documented decline.
It also means there is no baseline. Without prior inspections on record, there is no way to know whether the roach and rodent activity found on August 19 was a new development or a condition that had existed for some time without ever being inspected.
New or newly-licensed facilities with no inspection history are not necessarily new businesses. A restaurant can operate for months or longer before accumulating a substantial inspection record in the state database. The zero-inspection baseline here does not confirm when CM Chicken opened or how long it had been operating before this visit.
What the record does confirm is this: the first documented inspection of CM Chicken resulted in an emergency closure order. That is the starting point of the facility's public inspection history, not the culmination of one.
After the Closure
The reinspection clearance at 10:04 a.m. on August 20 allowed CM Chicken to reopen. State records confirm the facility met standards at that reinspection.
What those records do not show is what specific remediation was performed in the hours between the closure order and the reinspection, how extensive the roach and rodent activity was when inspectors first arrived, or what pest control measures were put in place before the doors reopened.
Facilities cleared after an emergency closure are typically subject to follow-up routine inspections, though the timing of those visits is not fixed. The next inspection of CM Chicken will be the first opportunity to determine whether the conditions that triggered the August 19 closure have been durably corrected, or whether pest activity resurfaces once inspectors are gone.
As of the data available for this report, CM Chicken has reopened. Its next routine inspection has not yet been recorded.
