MIAMI, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors walked into La Bodega Restaurant at 13774 SW 88th Street and found what they had found there before: roaches and flies, in enough numbers to shut the place down on the spot.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant closed on February 25, 2026. The closure order required the facility to vacate by February 27. It was the seventh time in a decade that La Bodega had been forced to close its doors.
What Inspectors Found
La Bodega Emergency Closures, 2016–2026
The February 25 inspection produced 18 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate violations, the most documented at the restaurant in any single visit in recent years. Among the high-severity findings: food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated; food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized; and no employee health policy on file.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for single-use items being improperly reused and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
The restaurant was allowed to reopen after a follow-up inspection on February 27, though five high-severity violations and three intermediate violations remained on record at that visit. A second follow-up on February 26 had also found five high-severity violations and four intermediate violations still outstanding.
What These Violations Mean
Roach and fly activity in a food service environment is not a housekeeping problem. It is a direct contamination pathway. Roaches carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and deposit them on food surfaces, prep equipment, and stored ingredients. Flies land on food and transfer pathogens from whatever surface they visited before. Either pest, present in sufficient numbers to trigger an emergency closure order, means inspectors believed customers were at immediate risk.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds that risk. Without a written policy requiring sick workers to stay home or report symptoms, a single employee with Norovirus can infect dozens of customers before anyone knows there is a problem. Norovirus alone accounts for an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are one of its primary transmission routes.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned and sanitized are a separate hazard. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that carry residue from one food to the next are a documented vector for bacterial transfer, particularly between raw proteins and ready-to-eat foods. At La Bodega, inspectors cited this violation on the same day they found active pest activity throughout the facility.
The reuse of single-use items, also cited in February, adds another layer. Gloves, cups, and utensils designed for one use are not built to withstand the cleaning and sanitizing process. Reusing them means contamination that would otherwise be discarded stays in circulation.
The Longer Record
La Bodega's inspection file at the state level is long and specific. The restaurant has been inspected 51 times on record and has accumulated 596 total violations across that history. That is an average of more than 11 violations per inspection visit.
The six prior emergency closures before February 2026 tell a particular story. Three of them came within a single month in the summer of 2016, all for roach activity, on June 16, July 6, and July 11. The restaurant reopened after each one within one to two days. A fourth closure for roach activity followed in April 2019. A fifth, for sewage backup, came in October 2024 and lasted two days.
The inspection record in the months surrounding the February 2026 closure shows the violations were not isolated. In October 2025, inspectors documented nine high-severity violations in a single visit. In March 2025, six high-severity violations. The February 25 inspection, with 18 high-severity violations, was the peak of a sustained pattern, not an outlier.
The record since the February closure does not show resolution. An April 27, 2026 inspection found 11 high-severity violations and four intermediate violations. A May 6 inspection found four high-severity and four intermediate violations. The most recent inspection on record, from May 14, 2026, found three high-severity violations and two intermediate violations still outstanding.
The Pattern
What the record shows, across a decade of inspections, is a facility that has been closed for roach activity four separate times, reopened each time within days, and continued to accumulate high-severity violations in the inspections that followed.
The February 2026 closure was the seventh forced shutdown at this address. The inspection that triggered it found more high-severity violations in a single visit than any other recent inspection on file.
As of the most recent inspection on record in May 2026, La Bodega was still operating with active high-severity violations documented by state inspectors.