MIAMI, FL. State inspectors walked into Anacapri Italian Restaurant on South Dixie Highway on September 23, 2026, and found food sourced from suppliers that bypass federal safety inspections entirely, a violation that makes it impossible to trace an ingredient back to its origin if a customer gets sick.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation means at least some of the ingredients served that day arrived outside the USDA and FDA inspection chain. If a customer became ill, investigators would have no supplier records to follow.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for food not cooked to its required minimum temperature. Undercooking is among the most direct routes to foodborne illness, and for poultry the margin is unambiguous: Salmonella survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. That citation, alongside two separate handwashing failures, and food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, rounds out a set of violations that cut across nearly every basic layer of kitchen safety.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items. That notice exists specifically to warn elderly diners, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems that certain dishes carry elevated risk. Without it, those customers had no way to make an informed choice.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is the one with the longest reach. When a restaurant receives ingredients from an unapproved supplier, those products have not passed through the federal inspection system designed to catch contamination at the source. If someone gets sick, there is no paper trail. Anacapri was cited for exactly this at 12669 S Dixie Hwy on September 23.
The undercooking citation compounds that risk. Bacteria introduced through an unverified supply chain can survive if the cooking process does not reach required temperatures. The two violations, taken together, describe a kitchen where contaminated food could arrive and leave without either checkpoint catching it.
The handwashing findings tell a separate story. Inspectors cited both inadequate facilities and improper technique, meaning the physical infrastructure was not sufficient and the practice was wrong even where facilities existed. Handwashing is the single most effective barrier between a kitchen worker and a customer, and Anacapri failed on both counts in the same inspection.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals near food is a violation that can cause acute harm, not the slow accumulation of bacterial illness but immediate poisoning if a chemical contaminates a dish or is mistaken for a food ingredient. That citation appeared in the same inspection as six others rated equally severe.
The Longer Record
The September 2026 inspection was not a departure from Anacapri's history. It was consistent with it.
State records show 27 inspections on file for the restaurant, with 488 total violations accumulated across that history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The eight most recent inspections before September 2026 each produced between six and twelve high-severity violations. The February 2026 visit found nine high-severity and five intermediate violations. The October 2025 visit found nine high-severity and four intermediate. Three consecutive inspections in March 2025, on the 25th, 26th, and 27th, produced eight, seven, and six high-severity violations respectively.
That three-day stretch in March 2025 is worth pausing on. Inspectors returned on back-to-back-to-back days and found high-severity violations each time. The counts dropped slightly from visit to visit, but the category, high-severity, never changed.
The February 2024 inspection produced the highest single-visit count in the recent record: twelve high-severity violations and three intermediate. That inspection did not result in a closure either.
The Pattern
Across eight inspections spanning roughly two and a half years, Anacapri has not recorded a single visit without high-severity violations. The numbers shift, but the severity tier does not.
The violations themselves recur in recognizable clusters. Food safety sourcing, temperature control, sanitation of surfaces and utensils, and handwashing failures appear repeatedly across the inspection history. These are not isolated lapses. They are the same categories, flagged by different inspectors, on different days, across different years.
Four hundred eighty-eight total violations over 27 inspections averages to more than 18 violations per visit. The September 2026 inspection, with nine total violations, was actually below that average.
After inspectors documented seven high-severity violations on September 23, 2026, the restaurant at 12669 S Dixie Hwy remained open for dinner service.
