MIAMI GARDENS, FL. State inspectors walked into Awash Ethiopian Restaurant on NW 2nd Avenue on June 17 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning some of what the kitchen was serving that day had never passed through a USDA or FDA inspection point.

That was one of eight high-severity violations documented at the Miami Gardens restaurant in a single visit. The facility was not closed.

What Inspectors Found

1HIGHFood from unapproved or unknown sourceNo traceability
2HIGHEmployee not reporting illness symptomsOutbreak risk
3HIGHFood in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulteratedFoodborne illness
4HIGHInadequate shell stock identification/recordsNo shellfish traceability
5HIGHFood contact surfaces not properly cleaned/sanitizedCross-contamination
6HIGHImproper hand and arm washing techniquePathogen transfer
7HIGHNo consumer advisory for raw/undercooked foodsUninformed diners
8HIGHPerson in charge not present or performing dutiesManagement failure
9INTInadequate ventilation and lightingAir quality

The inspector also documented food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated on the premises. That violation, stacked on top of the unapproved sourcing citation, means inspectors found both that the origin of some food was unknown and that some food on hand was not in acceptable condition.

Employees were cited for not reporting symptoms of illness. Inspectors also noted improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning staff were making handwashing attempts that still left pathogens on their hands.

The restaurant was additionally cited for inadequate shell stock identification records. Shellfish served without proper tagging cannot be traced back to a harvest site if a customer gets sick. A citation for food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized rounded out the food-handling failures, along with a violation for serving raw or undercooked items without a consumer advisory posted for diners.

No person in charge was present or performing duties during the inspection. The one intermediate violation was for inadequate ventilation and lighting.

What These Violations Mean

The food-sourcing violation is one of the most consequential a restaurant can receive. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unknown supplier, it has bypassed the inspection chain designed to catch Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli contamination before it reaches a plate. If a customer gets sick, health investigators have no paper trail to follow back to the source.

The illness-reporting failure compounds that risk directly. Food workers who do not report symptoms are the leading driver of multi-victim outbreaks, particularly for norovirus, which spreads through even trace contamination from an infected food handler. At Awash, inspectors found both that employees were not reporting symptoms and that their handwashing technique was insufficient to remove pathogens even when they did wash. Those two violations together describe a direct transmission route from a sick worker to a customer's food.

The shell stock identification failure adds a separate traceability gap. Oysters, clams, and mussels are consumed raw or lightly cooked and carry elevated risk of Vibrio and hepatitis A contamination. Without the required harvest tags on file, there is no way to link a shellfish illness back to a specific harvest area or lot.

The absence of a person in charge during the inspection is not a paperwork problem. CDC data links establishments without active managerial control to three times as many critical violations. At Awash on June 17, inspectors found eight high-severity violations in a kitchen where no one in authority was present to catch or correct them.

The Longer Record

Awash Ethiopian Restaurant: Inspection History

2026-06-178 high-severity violations. Food from unapproved source, sick employees not reporting illness, no person in charge. Facility remained open.
2025-12-123 high-severity violations.
2025-09-184 high, 1 intermediate violations.
2025-02-064 high, 1 intermediate violations.
2024-09-122 high, 1 intermediate violations.
2024-02-153 high, 1 intermediate violations.
2022-01-046 high, 2 intermediate violations.

June 17 was not an anomaly. State records show 21 inspections on file for Awash, with 123 total violations accumulated across that history. The restaurant has logged high-severity violations in every inspection on record going back to at least January 2022.

The pattern holds across years and across inspection teams. In September 2025, inspectors found four high-severity violations and one intermediate. Three months later, in December 2025, they returned and found three more high-severity citations. The June 2026 inspection, with eight high-severity violations, is the worst single visit in the recent record.

The restaurant has never been emergency-closed across all 21 inspections on file.

Open for Business

Eight high-severity violations in a single inspection is a significant threshold. The violations documented on June 17 touched nearly every critical category in food safety: sourcing, employee health, hand hygiene, surface sanitation, shellfish traceability, consumer notification, and management oversight.

Awash Ethiopian Restaurant on NW 2nd Avenue was open when inspectors arrived. It was open when they left.