NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors ordered Nick Caribbean Restaurant on West Dixie Highway closed on June 16 after documenting roach and rodent activity inside the restaurant, triggering the facility's third emergency closure in state records.
The shutdown was not a surprise to anyone who had been reading the inspection reports.
What Inspectors Found
Nick Caribbean Restaurant: Recent Inspection Pattern
The closure inspection on June 16 produced 9 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations, the most serious single-visit tally in the recent record. A second inspection conducted the same day documented 4 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations.
The high-severity findings from the most recent inspection, on June 19, covered a wide range of serious concerns. Inspectors cited inadequate handwashing by food employees, food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, and toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled. They also cited the absence of an employee health policy, no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, and required procedures for specialized processes not being followed.
Single-use items were being reused. Equipment was documented in poor repair. Ventilation and lighting were cited as inadequate.
What These Violations Mean
Roach and rodent activity is one of the conditions Florida law treats as an immediate threat to public health, and it is the specific reason the state has the authority to close a restaurant without advance notice. Roaches and rodents move freely between sewage, garbage, and food preparation surfaces. They deposit bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on every surface they cross. A customer eating food prepared on a contaminated surface has no way to know the exposure occurred.
The handwashing violation compounds that risk directly. Improper handwashing is the single most documented pathway for spreading foodborne illness in a commercial kitchen. When combined with food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned or sanitized, the contamination can move from a worker's hands to a cutting board to a plate without any single point of intervention stopping it.
Undercooking is its own separate hazard. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit and causes illness that can be severe enough to require hospitalization. The citation for food not cooked to required minimum temperatures at a Caribbean restaurant, where poultry dishes are common, is not a paperwork violation.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals near food is the violation that most surprises people who assume it is rare. It is not. Chemical contamination from cleaning agents stored near food prep areas can cause acute poisoning, and mislabeled containers create the conditions for an accidental mix-up that injures a worker or contaminates a batch of food.
The Longer Record
Thirty-four inspections. Three hundred sixty-nine total violations. Three emergency closures.
That is the documented history of Nick Caribbean Restaurant at 14530 West Dixie Highway as of this closure. The facility has been inspected 34 times in state records, accumulating an average of more than 10 violations per inspection across its history. That average holds even accounting for the two consecutive clean inspections in the summer of 2025, when the facility recorded zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations on back-to-back visits in May and August.
Those two clean inspections are the most important detail in the longer record, because they show the problems are not structural or unfixable. The facility can pass. It did pass, twice in a row, less than a year before this closure.
What followed was a rapid deterioration. By October 2025, inspectors were back to documenting 7 high-severity violations. By March 2026, 4 more high-severity violations. By June 16, 2026, the pest activity was severe enough to trigger a shutdown.
The prior emergency closure on February 16, 2024, was also for roach and rodent activity. That closure lasted one day. The restaurant reopened February 17 after meeting state standards. The speed of that reopening, and the return of the same violation category two years later, is the pattern the record establishes.
As of the inspections conducted on June 18 and June 19, three days after the closure order, the facility was still accumulating 7 high-severity violations per visit. State records do not confirm that Nick Caribbean Restaurant has reopened.