POMPANO BEACH, FL. Toxic chemicals were stored improperly at Aromas del Peru at 1 N Ocean Blvd on August 19, 2026, alongside five other high-severity violations that state inspectors documented and left standing when they walked out the door without closing the restaurant.
The inspection produced six high-priority citations and three intermediate ones. The facility remained open throughout.
What Inspectors Found
The chemical storage citation is the kind that has caused acute poisoning in other food service settings. Improperly stored or unlabeled toxic chemicals near food preparation areas create a direct contamination pathway, and mislabeled containers can be mistaken for food-safe products by staff.
The illness-reporting failure compounded the risk. When employees are not required or trained to report symptoms, someone actively sick can handle food for an entire shift without any mechanism to stop them.
The handwashing violations arrived as a pair, which is notable. Inspectors cited both inadequate facilities, meaning the physical infrastructure for washing hands was insufficient, and improper technique, meaning employees who did attempt to wash hands were not doing so correctly. Both conditions existed at the same time in the same kitchen.
No consumer advisory was posted for raw or undercooked menu items. Aromas del Peru is a Peruvian restaurant, and Peruvian cuisine commonly features dishes such as ceviche that involve raw or lightly acidified fish. Without a posted advisory, customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, elderly diners, and young children had no notice that what they ordered carried elevated risk.
The person in charge was either absent or not actively supervising. That citation sat atop a list of violations that ranged from chemical storage to sewage disposal to utensil sanitation.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation is not a paperwork problem. Food workers are the single largest vector for norovirus outbreaks in restaurant settings, and the mechanism is direct: a sick employee touches food, a customer eats it, an outbreak starts. The absence of any system requiring staff to report symptoms removes the only early warning available.
The handwashing findings deserve to be read together. A kitchen without adequate handwashing facilities cannot comply with hand hygiene requirements regardless of employee intent. Add improper technique to that, and pathogens present on hands after contact with raw proteins or contaminated surfaces remain there through the next food-handling step.
Improper sewage or wastewater disposal adds a separate contamination pathway. Raw sewage contains fecal pathogens including E. coli, hepatitis A, and norovirus. When wastewater is not disposed of correctly, those pathogens can reach food contact surfaces, utensils, or food itself.
The utensil citation closes the loop. Multi-use utensils that are not properly cleaned develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours. Those biofilms are resistant to casual rinsing and can transfer bacteria directly to food during preparation or plating.
The Longer Record
The August 19 inspection was not an anomaly. Aromas del Peru has 13 inspections on record and 71 total violations across that history, a rate that works out to roughly 5.5 violations per inspection on average.
The pattern of high-severity citations goes back at least two years. The August 2025 inspection produced nine high-priority violations. The February 2024 inspection produced four. The September 2024 inspection produced two more. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
What the history also shows is that the facility can pass cleanly. The inspection eight days after this one, on August 27, 2026, produced zero high-priority and zero intermediate violations. The December 2023 and November 2024 inspections were also clean. The restaurant is capable of meeting standards. The question the record raises is why it took another inspection to get there.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Aromas del Peru on August 19 and left the restaurant open. Customers who ate there that day had no way of knowing that toxic chemicals were improperly stored in the kitchen, that handwashing infrastructure was inadequate, that no illness-reporting system was in place for staff, or that no advisory had been posted for raw menu items.
Eight days later, a follow-up inspection found none of those violations remaining.
The restaurant was open the entire time in between.
