POMPANO BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into 5th Element Indian Grill on South Powerline Road on August 26 and found food coming from sources that have never been inspected by the USDA or FDA, toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, and not a single written policy to keep sick employees out of the kitchen. They cited eight high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. Then they left the restaurant open.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation sits at the top of the list for a reason. Food from unapproved or unknown sources has not passed through the federal inspection chain that screens for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli. If a customer gets sick from something on the menu, investigators have no paper trail to follow.
Toxic chemicals stored near or improperly labeled around food is a different category of danger entirely. That violation is not about bacterial growth over time. It is about the possibility of acute poisoning from a single meal.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for inadequate shell stock identification records. Shellfish, which can be served raw or lightly cooked, require harvest tags that trace exactly where and when the product was pulled from the water. Without those records, an oyster or clam that came from a contaminated bed cannot be traced back, and the people who ate it cannot be warned.
The remaining high-severity violations piled up from there: food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, improper hand and arm washing technique, time as a public health control not properly used, and no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. The intermediate violations included single-use items being reused, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The absence of an employee health policy is not a paperwork problem. Without a written policy that requires sick workers to stay home, there is no mechanism to stop an employee with Norovirus from handling food that goes directly to a customer's plate. Norovirus accounts for an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are one of its most efficient transmission routes.
Improper handwashing technique compounds that risk. The violation does not mean employees skipped the sink entirely. It means that when they did wash, they did so incorrectly, leaving pathogens on their hands even after the attempt. Combined with unsanitized food contact surfaces, those pathogens have a direct path to every dish that leaves the kitchen.
The time-as-a-public-health-control violation is one that diners rarely hear about. When a restaurant uses time rather than temperature to keep food safe, it commits to discarding food after a set window. If that tracking is not done correctly, food that has spent hours in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, stays in service rather than getting thrown out.
The missing consumer advisory matters most to specific customers: pregnant women, elderly diners, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. Those groups face the highest risk from raw or undercooked proteins, and the advisory is their only warning that a dish carries that risk.
The Longer Record
The August 26 inspection did not happen in isolation. State records show 41 inspections on file for 5th Element Indian Grill, with 352 total violations accumulated across that history.
The restaurant has been emergency-closed twice. The most recent closure came on July 24, 2025, when inspectors found rodent, roach, and fly activity. The restaurant passed a follow-up inspection the next day and was allowed to reopen. The earlier closure, in April 2020, was also for rodent activity.
The pattern around the 2025 closure is worth examining closely. Inspectors cited seven high-severity violations on July 24, 2025. The restaurant cleared the follow-up on July 25. Then, on September 25, 2025, just two months later, it drew nine high-severity violations in a single visit. A follow-up on September 26 showed zero high-severity violations. On December 1, 2025, another inspection found nothing. That cycle, serious violations followed by a clean follow-up, followed by serious violations again, has repeated across multiple inspection cycles at this location.
The January 23, 2025 inspection found six high-severity violations. The December 12, 2024 inspection found one. The restaurant has demonstrated it can pass inspections. The question the record raises is why the high-severity violations keep coming back.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority requires inspectors to find an imminent threat to public health before shuttering a restaurant on the spot. Eight high-severity violations on August 26, including food from unapproved sources and toxic chemicals stored near food, did not meet that threshold.
The restaurant at 1325 S Powerline Road remained open for business after the inspection.
