MIAMI, FL. In April 2026, a state inspector walked into Array Eatery at 195 NW 36th Street and found food sourced from suppliers that had never been vetted by federal safety regulators, shellfish on hand with no identification records to trace where it came from, and toxic chemicals stored improperly near food. By the end of that April 16 visit, the inspector had logged 7 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate ones. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source citation is the kind that gives food safety officials the most concern. When a restaurant buys food outside of USDA and FDA-regulated supply chains, there is no inspection record, no chain of custody, and no way to trace contamination back to a source if customers fall ill.
Compounding that, inspectors found shellfish on the premises without proper shell stock identification tags or records. Oysters, clams, and mussels are frequently eaten raw or lightly cooked, and they are among the most common vehicles for Vibrio and norovirus. Without traceability tags, there is no way to know where those shellfish came from or whether they were harvested from approved waters.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food rounded out the most immediately dangerous findings. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning products and chemical agents can contaminate food directly, and inspectors flagged the storage conditions as a violation of basic separation protocols.
The remaining high-severity citations piled on. Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and counters that touch everything served to customers, were found not properly cleaned or sanitized. Improper handwashing technique was cited, meaning employees were going through the motions of washing hands without eliminating pathogens. Time was not being used correctly as a public health control, which means food was allowed to sit in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, without the precise tracking that substitutes for refrigeration in some kitchen workflows. And the menu contained raw or undercooked items with no consumer advisory, leaving vulnerable diners, including pregnant women, the elderly, and immunocompromised customers, with no warning.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source and shellfish traceability violations are linked, and together they represent a complete breakdown in the first line of food safety defense. If a customer got sick after eating shellfish at Array Eatery in April, investigators would have had no records to trace the product back to its harvest site, no way to identify other affected restaurants, and no path to a recall. That is precisely why federal and state law requires those tags to be kept on file.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are one of the most reliable mechanisms for cross-contamination in a commercial kitchen. Bacterial biofilms, layers of organisms that adhere to surfaces and resist routine wiping, can form within 24 hours on surfaces that are not sanitized correctly. Every piece of food prepared on those surfaces after a biofilm develops carries that contamination forward.
The chemical storage violation adds a different category of risk. Unlike bacterial contamination, which causes illness over hours or days, chemical contamination can cause acute poisoning immediately. A mislabeled chemical bottle, or one stored too close to food prep areas, is a single mistake away from a serious incident.
The missing consumer advisory may seem administrative compared to the others. It is not. Customers who are immunocompromised, pregnant, or elderly face a substantially higher risk from raw shellfish and undercooked proteins. A menu advisory is not a formality. It is the mechanism by which those customers make informed choices about their own safety.
The Longer Record
Array Eatery: Inspection History (Selected)
April's inspection was not an outlier. It was the continuation of a pattern that state records document across at least four years of inspections. The December 2025 visit produced 8 high-severity violations, the highest single-visit count in the recent record. August 2024 matched April 2026 exactly, with 7 high-severity citations. Array Eatery has now accumulated 209 total violations across 30 inspections on record.
The facility was emergency-closed once before, in December 2018, after inspectors found roach activity. It reopened the following day. The years since that closure have brought no sustained improvement in the high-severity violation counts, which have reached 4 or higher in seven of the eight most recent inspections in the record.
The one clean inspection in recent history was June 2022, when the facility recorded zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. Every inspection since has produced high-severity citations, and the counts have trended upward, not down.
Array Eatery left April 16, 2026 with 7 high-severity violations documented, food from unverified sources on the premises, shellfish with no traceability records, and chemicals improperly stored near food. The doors stayed open.