MIAMI, FL. State inspectors ordered Giardino Gourmet Salads on SW 88th Street closed on August 27 after documenting fly activity inside the Miami restaurant, a finding severe enough to prompt an emergency vacate order effective by the following morning.
The restaurant reopened at 8:07 a.m. on August 28. But the follow-up inspection that cleared it for reopening still found two high-severity violations on site.
What Inspectors Found
The August 27 inspection logged five high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The fly activity triggered the closure order, but two of the high-severity findings that day pointed to problems that fly presence alone does not explain.
Inspectors cited employees for not reporting symptoms of illness, a violation that documents a failure in the restaurant's own internal protocols, not just a lapse in cleaning. The second high-severity finding was food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, meaning the cutting boards, prep surfaces, or equipment that touches food customers eat had not been adequately cleaned between uses.
The intermediate violations brought the total count for that single visit to eight citations across severity levels.
What These Violations Mean
Fly activity is not just a nuisance finding. Flies move between waste, raw food, and finished product, carrying bacteria on their legs and bodies across surfaces that food touches. In a restaurant that serves salads, where most ingredients are not cooked before reaching the customer, that transfer has no heat step to interrupt it. That is why inspectors treat active fly infestations as a condition that warrants closure rather than a correction-on-next-visit citation.
The employee illness reporting violation compounds the risk significantly. When workers do not report symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, or jaundice to a person in charge, they remain on the line handling food. Norovirus, the pathogen most commonly linked to this violation, spreads through direct hand-to-food contact and requires an extremely small dose to cause illness in customers. Giardino's format, a salad counter where workers build orders by hand, is precisely the kind of service model where this pathway is most direct.
The food contact surface violation documented the same day means that even if a symptomatic worker had been removed, the surfaces they worked on had not been properly sanitized. Cutting boards and prep surfaces are the primary vehicle for bacterial transfer from one ingredient to the next. In a salad kitchen, where the same board may touch raw proteins and fresh greens in sequence, that failure reaches every plate.
Together, the three violation types documented on August 27 describe a kitchen where flies were present, surfaces were not being sanitized, and the system for catching sick workers before they reached the line had broken down.
The Longer Record
The August 27 closure was not Giardino's first. State records show the facility has one prior emergency closure on record, meaning this is its second forced shutdown across 20 total inspections.
Those 20 inspections have produced 142 total violations. That averages more than seven violations per visit across the facility's documented history, though the distribution is uneven. The most recent eight inspections alone show a consistent pattern of high-severity findings at nearly every visit.
In August 2024, inspectors logged four high-severity violations and one intermediate in a single visit. That November 2023 visit produced five high-severity violations and one intermediate, the same high-severity count as the closure inspection two years later. The November 2025 inspection found two high-severity violations and one intermediate. Not one of those eight inspections came back clean on high-severity citations.
The food contact surface violation documented on August 27 was not a first appearance. A kitchen that accumulates 142 violations over 20 inspections, with high-severity findings in seven of the eight most recently recorded visits, is not a kitchen where inspectors are catching isolated bad days.
After the Reopening
The August 28 follow-up inspection allowed the restaurant to reopen, but it did not come back clean. Two high-severity violations remained on record as of that morning's inspection, even after the overnight corrective work required to lift the closure order.
State records do not specify which two high-severity violations were still present at reopening. The fly activity that triggered the closure was resolved to inspectors' satisfaction, but the remaining high-severity findings mean the facility cleared the closure threshold without fully clearing its inspection record.
Giardino Gourmet Salads is licensed as a permanent food service establishment. The restaurant was open as of 8:07 a.m. on August 28. What those two remaining high-severity violations were, and whether they have since been corrected, the public record does not say.
