PLANTATION, FL. State inspectors ordered Tacocraft Taqueria and Tequila Bar at 301 N University Drive emergency-closed on May 11 after documenting roach and fly activity inside the restaurant, the same combination of pest violations that has now triggered three shutdowns at this location since 2022.
The closure order required the restaurant to vacate by May 12. It reopened later that morning at 10:10 a.m., after a follow-up inspection found conditions had improved to the point where one high-severity violation remained but the immediate threat was considered resolved.
What Inspectors Found
Tacocraft Plantation: Recent Inspection Severity
The May 11 inspection produced five high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. Among the documented findings was a citation for food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, a high-severity violation that inspectors flagged alongside the active pest activity.
The pest violations alone were enough to trigger the emergency order. Roach activity and fly activity together represent two distinct and simultaneous contamination threats inside a food preparation environment.
The follow-up inspection on May 12 showed the restaurant had cleared the pest and most other violations. One high-severity violation, the food contact surface citation, remained on record from that second visit.
What These Violations Mean
Roaches and flies are not merely a nuisance finding. Both insects carry pathogens on their bodies and deposit them on any surface they contact, including cutting boards, prep tables, utensils, and food itself. A customer eating at a table cannot see whether the tongs that plated their food had been touched by a roach overnight.
Fly activity has its own specific danger in a kitchen environment. Flies feed and lay eggs on organic waste, then land directly on exposed food and food-contact surfaces. The combination of roaches and flies documented on May 11 meant inspectors were looking at two separate active contamination pathways at the same time.
The food contact surface violation compounds both. When surfaces that touch food are not properly cleaned and sanitized, bacteria transferred by pests, by raw proteins, or by cross-contact between ingredients are not eliminated between uses. A cutting board that handles raw chicken and is not sanitized before the next use is a direct transfer route for salmonella or campylobacter to whatever is prepared on it next.
Together, these three violations, roach activity, fly activity, and improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, describe a kitchen where multiple contamination risks were present and active at the same moment inspectors walked in.
The Longer Record
The May 11 closure was not an isolated event. State records show 18 inspections on file for this location, with 81 total violations documented across that history. This is the restaurant's third emergency closure.
The first emergency closure came on April 27, 2022, ordered for fly activity. The restaurant reopened the following day. The second closure is the one that occurred this month.
The inspection record between those two closures does not describe a facility that resolved its problems in 2022 and stayed clean. February 2025 produced six high-severity violations in a single visit, the highest single-day high-severity count in the available recent history. April 2025 added three more high-severity violations alongside three intermediate ones. November 2025 brought two high-severity violations. A clean inspection in early March 2026 was followed five days later by two more high-severity violations at a follow-up visit.
The pattern that stands out in this record is the gap between passing inspections and the ones that follow. The March 6, 2026 inspection found zero high-severity violations. The May 11 inspection, roughly two months later, found five, plus the active pest activity that forced the closure order.
Tacocraft at this Plantation address has now been emergency-closed for pest activity twice in four years, with fly violations present in both closure orders. The 2022 closure involved flies. The 2026 closure involved both roaches and flies. Whether the underlying conditions that produce these pest findings have been structurally addressed, or whether the restaurant is resolving each episode and cycling back toward the same problems, is a question the inspection record raises but does not answer.
The restaurant had reopened by mid-morning on May 12. The food contact surface violation documented during that follow-up inspection remained on the books.