GREEN ACRES, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors walked into Los Catrachos II on Lake Worth Road and found what they had found there before: roaches and flies. On February 17, inspectors documented five high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, and the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant vacated by February 18. It was the third time in five months the same location had been forced to close.
The restaurant reopened at 8:53 a.m. on February 18, after a follow-up inspection found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. The turnaround was fast. The pattern, however, was not new.
What Inspectors Found
Los Catrachos II: Emergency Closures, Oct. 2025 – Feb. 2026
The February closure was triggered by roach and fly activity, the same combination that had shut the restaurant down in October 2025. State records from the February 17 inspection show five high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, the most serious inspection result the restaurant had recorded in the months surrounding the closure.
The prior December closure had been ordered for roach activity alone, and the restaurant had cleared a follow-up inspection the same day it was shut. The October closure had also resolved within a day. Each time, the restaurant passed its reinspection and reopened. Each time, the underlying pest problem returned.
What These Violations Mean
Roach and fly activity inside a food-service establishment is classified as a high-priority violation because both insects are direct vectors for bacterial contamination. Roaches carry pathogens including salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and in their waste, depositing them on food-contact surfaces, prep areas, and stored ingredients. A customer eating food prepared in a kitchen with active roach activity has no way of knowing that surfaces or ingredients were contaminated before cooking.
Flies present a different but equally direct risk. A single fly can transfer bacteria from waste or decomposing matter to food in seconds, and fly activity near open food or prep stations is treated by inspectors as an immediate threat to public health, not a housekeeping issue.
When inspectors find both roaches and flies in the same facility, as they did at Los Catrachos II in February and again in October, the combined presence signals a sanitation environment where pest control has broken down at multiple points. That is why the state has authority to order a facility vacated immediately rather than issuing a citation and scheduling a future follow-up.
The five high-severity violations documented on February 17 placed that inspection among the most serious in the restaurant's recent history. High-severity violations are the category most directly linked to foodborne illness risk.
The Pattern
The February closure did not arrive without warning. State records show that inspectors had visited Los Catrachos II at least twice in December 2025, including the emergency closure on December 15 for roach activity, and twice in October 2025, including the closure on October 13 for roach and fly activity. In each case, a same-day or next-day reinspection cleared the restaurant to reopen.
The rapid reinspections and reopenings are standard procedure in Florida. Once a facility corrects the violations that triggered an emergency closure, it can resume operations. But the inspection record at this location shows that corrections made under closure pressure did not prevent the same category of violation from recurring within weeks.
Between the October 2025 closure and the December 2025 closure, roughly two months passed. Between the December closure and the February closure, roughly two months passed again.
The Longer Record
Los Catrachos II has 39 inspections on record and 260 total violations documented across its history as a permanent food-service establishment. Three of those inspections resulted in emergency closures, all within a five-month window between October 2025 and February 2026, and all citing pest activity as the triggering violation.
That concentration of closures in a short period is notable. A facility can accumulate violations over years without triggering an emergency closure. Los Catrachos II triggered three closures in roughly 130 days, each for the same category of problem.
The April 2026 inspection history offers some context. On April 20, inspectors returned and found four high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, a significant result even without a closure order. The following day, April 21, a follow-up inspection found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. The same pattern that defined the closure months, a problematic inspection followed by a clean reinspection, continued into spring.
The 260 violations across 39 inspections works out to an average of nearly seven violations per inspection over the life of the record. Whether the February closure marked a turning point or another chapter in an ongoing cycle, the April 20 inspection, which produced four high-severity violations more than two months after the February reopening, suggested the restaurant's compliance challenges had not fully resolved.