HIALEAH, FL. Inspectors who walked into Asere Batidos on West 49th Street on August 3 found food from unapproved or unknown sources being used in the kitchen, a violation that means state and federal safety inspectors never checked what customers were being served. The shop logged six high-severity violations that day. It was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious a Florida inspector can document. When a restaurant uses ingredients from unapproved or unidentified suppliers, those products have bypassed the USDA and FDA inspection systems that screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and other pathogens. If a customer gets sick, there is no supply chain record to trace.
Inspectors also found food not cooked to the required minimum internal temperature. Undercooked food is one of the leading documented causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States. Salmonella survives in poultry held below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a single improperly cooked serving is enough to cause illness.
The third food-related high citation documented food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated. That finding, paired with the sourcing violation, means inspectors had concerns about both where the food came from and the state it was in once it arrived.
The remaining high-severity violations compounded the picture. The shop had no written employee health policy, meaning there was no formal system to keep sick workers out of food preparation. Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, which means employees were attempting to wash their hands but doing so in a way that leaves pathogens behind. And there was no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items, leaving customers with no information to make informed choices about their own risk.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of an unapproved food source and undercooked food in the same inspection is particularly significant. An unapproved source removes the first safety checkpoint. Undercooking removes the last one. If contaminated food enters a kitchen and is not cooked to a temperature that kills pathogens, there is no remaining barrier between the bacteria and the customer's plate.
The employee health policy violation adds a separate transmission route. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads easily when infected food workers handle food without a policy requiring them to report symptoms or stay home. Without a written policy at Asere Batidos, the inspection record shows there was no documented system in place to prevent that.
Improper handwashing technique is a violation that often gets dismissed as minor. It is not. Studies have shown that incorrect technique, including insufficient time, skipped steps, or failure to reach all surfaces of the hand, leaves the same pathogens behind as no handwashing at all. The citation means the attempt was made and still failed to meet the standard.
The missing consumer advisory matters most for the people least equipped to absorb the risk: elderly customers, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. Without the posted notice, those customers have no way to know that a menu item may be served raw or undercooked.
The Longer Record
Asere Batidos: Recent Inspection History
Asere Batidos has been inspected 28 times. Over those visits, inspectors have documented 280 total violations. August 3 was not an outlier.
Every inspection on record going back to January 2024 has included at least three high-severity violations. The worst single visit, in May 2024, produced seven high-severity citations and two intermediate ones. The shop has never been emergency-closed.
The February 2026 inspection, just six months before August's, showed only one high-severity violation. That relative improvement did not hold. By August, the count had climbed back to six, matching the severity level of the September 2025 visit and exceeding the January 2025 and October 2024 visits.
In 28 inspections, the pattern is consistent: high-severity violations appear at nearly every visit, the counts fluctuate but rarely approach zero, and the facility has not been shut down once.
As of the August 3 inspection, Asere Batidos on West 49th Street remained open for business.
