PEMBROKE PINES, FL. Back in April, state inspectors walked into Kelly's Cajun Grill at 11401 Pines Blvd and found what it takes to shut a restaurant down on the spot: active roach activity inside a working food service operation.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the Pembroke Pines location closed on April 15, 2026. The order required the restaurant to vacate by April 16. Records show the facility had reopened by 10:12 a.m. on an unspecified date following the closure order, though the full circumstances of that reopening are not detailed in available records.
What Inspectors Found
Live roach activity was the sole documented reason state inspectors ordered Kelly's Cajun Grill shut on April 15, 2026, a finding serious enough under Florida law to require immediate closure.
The violation that triggered the closure was roach activity, the specific finding inspectors cited when ordering the restaurant off-limits to customers. Florida regulators classify active pest presence as an emergency condition, one that does not require a warning or a follow-up visit before the order to close is issued.
Roaches in a food preparation or service environment are not treated as a routine citation. The presence of live roaches indicates an infestation that has progressed to the point where insects are moving through the same spaces where food is stored, prepared, or plated.
What This Means
Roach activity is one of a short list of conditions that Florida law treats as an immediate public health hazard, serious enough to bypass the normal inspection and warning process entirely. When an inspector documents live roaches in a food service facility, the law does not require a grace period. The restaurant closes.
The reason is direct contamination risk. Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria on their bodies and legs. They move between drains, garbage, and food contact surfaces without distinction. A single roach crossing a prep surface or a plate leaves behind pathogens that no amount of cooking by the customer can address, because the contamination happens after food is prepared.
The risk is compounded by the nature of roach infestations. A visible roach during a daytime inspection is rarely a solitary insect. Cockroaches are nocturnal and avoid light. Finding one or more during an active inspection typically means a larger population is present in walls, under equipment, and inside food storage areas during hours when no inspector is watching.
That is why Florida treats roach activity as a closure-level finding, not a warning-level one. Customers eating at a restaurant with an active infestation have no way of knowing the risk. The closure order is the mechanism that removes the risk before more customers are exposed.
The Longer Record
The state's inspection database shows no prior inspections on record for this location before the April 15 closure. No prior violations are listed. No prior emergency closures appear in the record.
That absence of history is notable. It means there is no documented pattern of escalating violations leading up to this closure, no prior roach citations that went unaddressed, and no prior warnings that inspectors had flagged the facility for pest concerns. It also means there is no baseline record against which to measure whether conditions had been deteriorating over time.
For a facility with zero prior inspections on record, a closure-level finding on what may have been an early inspection represents a significant starting point. There is no prior clean record to weigh against it.
What the record cannot show, because it does not exist, is whether any informal or routine inspections occurred before April 15 that did not result in formal documentation, or whether the roach activity developed rapidly in a facility that had otherwise been operating without incident. The available data does not answer those questions.
After the Closure
Records indicate the restaurant had reopened by 10:12 a.m. following the closure order. Florida's emergency closure process requires a facility to correct the conditions that triggered the shutdown before a follow-up inspection can clear it to reopen. A reopening time in the records suggests inspectors returned and determined the immediate violation had been addressed.
What is not confirmed in the available data is the date of that reopening inspection or what, specifically, inspectors documented when they cleared the facility. The closure was ordered April 15, with a vacate deadline of April 16. The reopening time on record does not include a corresponding date.
Kelly's Cajun Grill is licensed for food service at the Pines Boulevard location, records confirm. Whether the April 15 closure and its circumstances prompted any additional follow-up inspections beyond the initial reopening clearance is not reflected in the current record.
The roach activity that closed the restaurant in April remains the only violation in the facility's documented history.