PALMETTO BAY, FL. State inspectors ordered Cuban Guys Sandwiches and More on S Dixie Hwy closed on June 16 after documenting fly activity inside the restaurant, the specific violation that triggered an emergency shutdown and required the facility to vacate by June 17.
The restaurant reopened at 8:02 a.m. the following morning after a follow-up inspection found zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations remaining.
What Inspectors Found
Cuban Guys: Recent Inspection Severity, 2024–2026
The June 16 inspection produced one high-severity violation and one intermediate violation, both tied to the fly activity that prompted the closure order. The follow-up visit the next morning found the facility had addressed every cited concern.
Fly activity in a food service environment is not a minor housekeeping complaint. Flies move between waste, raw surfaces, and prepared food, depositing bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on anything they land on. Unlike a roach sighting that might be contained to a storage area, flies in active food preparation or service zones represent a direct contamination route to food that customers are about to eat.
What This Means
An emergency closure for fly activity means inspectors determined the risk to customers was immediate enough that the restaurant could not continue serving food. The state does not issue emergency closure orders for minor or administrative violations. The presence of flies in sufficient numbers or in critical locations, such as near food prep surfaces, open food containers, or the service line, is treated as an active public health threat.
The concern is transmission. Flies do not need to land on food for an extended period to transfer pathogens. A single landing on an open sandwich or an uncovered ingredient is enough. In a restaurant serving ready-to-eat food like Cuban sandwiches, where items go directly from prep to the customer without a cooking step that would kill bacteria, the contamination risk is higher than it would be for raw proteins that are cooked to order.
The closure was lifted in under 24 hours, which means inspectors were satisfied that the fly activity had been resolved. What the record does not show is what remediation was performed overnight or whether pest control was brought in.
The Pattern
This was not the first time Cuban Guys Sandwiches and More has been shut down by state inspectors. Records show the facility has one prior emergency closure on record before June 16, making this its second.
The inspection history across 24 visits tells a consistent story. The restaurant has accumulated 142 total violations on record. Of the eight most recent inspections reviewed, only one, a February 2024 visit, produced zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations. Every other inspection in that stretch found at least one high-severity citation.
January 2025 was the worst recent stretch outside of a closure, with three high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The September 2024 inspection also produced two high-severity and two intermediate violations. January 2024 matched that, with three high-severity and two intermediate citations.
The pattern is not one of a restaurant that occasionally slips. It is a facility that has produced high-severity violations in six of the last seven inspections before the June 16 closure, with the only clean visit sandwiched between two inspection periods that each generated multiple serious citations.
The Longer Record
Twenty-four inspections over the life of this facility have produced 142 total violations. That average works out to roughly six violations per inspection visit, though the distribution is uneven. The most recent clean inspection, February 2024, came immediately before a January 2024 visit that had produced five violations across two severity tiers, suggesting the February result may have reflected a post-citation correction rather than a sustained improvement.
The prior emergency closure is significant context. A facility that has now been ordered closed twice by state inspectors, with high-severity violations documented in the majority of recent inspection visits, is not experiencing isolated incidents. The June 16 closure was ordered under the same regulatory authority as the first, and the same category of violation, an active pest or contamination threat, was serious enough each time to require customers to be turned away.
The restaurant reopened the morning of June 17. What the record does not confirm is whether the fly activity that triggered the June 16 closure was connected to the same underlying conditions that produced the prior closure, or whether the two incidents were separate in origin.
Cuban Guys Sandwiches and More has been licensed for permanent food service at 14685 S Dixie Hwy throughout its inspection history. The June 17 follow-up found no remaining violations. Whether that result holds at the next unannounced inspection is the open question the record cannot yet answer.