BOYNTON BEACH, FL. When state inspectors walked into Baciami Inc. on South Federal Highway on August 26, they found no written employee health policy, no one actively managing the kitchen, and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. Six high-severity violations later, the restaurant remained open.
Not a single intermediate violation accompanied the six high-severity citations. Every violation inspectors documented that day sat at the top of the severity scale.
What Inspectors Found
The person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties. That finding alone, according to CDC data cited in state inspection records, correlates with three times as many critical violations in a given establishment.
Inspectors also documented that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, and that the restaurant had no written health policy requiring them to do so. Those two violations do not exist independently. Without a policy, workers have no formal obligation to disclose when they are sick, and without reporting, a sick employee can handle food undetected.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensil surfaces that touch what customers eat, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. That violation was cited alongside improper handwashing technique, meaning that even employees who attempted to wash their hands were not doing so in a way that removes pathogens.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. Florida requires such disclosures specifically to protect customers who face the greatest risk from undercooked proteins: elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and people with compromised immune systems.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no illness policy and employees not reporting symptoms is what public health investigators call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently through a sick food worker who does not know, or is not required to disclose, that they are ill. A written health policy is the minimum structural safeguard against that transmission route. Baciami did not have one on August 26.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces are a direct vehicle for bacterial transfer. A cutting board used for raw protein and not sanitized between uses can transfer Salmonella, Listeria, or E. coli to the next item placed on it, including items served raw or with no further cooking step.
Improper handwashing technique compounds that risk. Studies show that an incorrect handwashing attempt, wrong duration, skipping steps, not using soap, leaves live pathogens on hands. A worker who believes they washed their hands but did so incorrectly carries the same contamination risk as one who did not wash at all.
The missing consumer advisory matters most to the customers least equipped to read a menu and self-assess risk. A diner with a suppressed immune system ordering a dish with undercooked eggs or rare beef has no way to make an informed choice if the menu does not tell them what they are eating.
The Longer Record
The August inspection was not an isolated bad day. Baciami Inc. has accumulated 94 total violations across 25 inspections on record. The most recent inspection before August, conducted on March 4, 2026, turned up four high-severity violations and one intermediate. The inspection before that, in October 2025, found two high-severity violations. The one before that, in February 2025, found two more.
Going back further, inspections on consecutive days in November 2023, the 28th and 29th, produced three high-severity violations and one high-severity violation respectively. The October 2024 inspection found two high-severity violations and one intermediate.
Only two inspections in the recent record produced zero high-severity violations: April 2024 and October 2024. Both were followed by inspections that found high-severity citations again.
The facility has never been emergency-closed. That fact sits alongside a record of persistent high-severity findings, including repeated citations in categories related to management oversight and employee health practices, across multiple inspection cycles.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Baciami Inc. on August 26 and left the restaurant open. Customers who dined there that day, or in the days following, ate at a restaurant with no written employee illness policy, no confirmed proper handwashing, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no manager verifiably in control of the kitchen.
The restaurant has 94 violations across 25 inspections and has never been ordered to close.
