MIAMI, FL. Inspectors walked into Bahama Fish at 7202 SW 8th Street on April 23 and found no written employee health policy, meaning any worker showing symptoms of norovirus, salmonella, or hepatitis A could have been handling food with no system in place to send them home.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector also cited improper handwashing technique, a separate citation from the inadequate handwashing facilities finding. Both violations existing simultaneously means employees lacked both the physical infrastructure to wash their hands correctly and were not doing so correctly even when they tried.
Food contact surfaces were documented as not properly cleaned or sanitized. At a seafood restaurant, those surfaces come into direct contact with raw fish before touching plates bound for customers.
The restaurant also failed to post a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. That notice exists specifically to warn elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and people with compromised immune systems that certain menu items carry elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The employee health policy violation is not a paperwork problem. Without a written policy, a kitchen has no formal mechanism to identify or remove a sick worker. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads directly through food handled by infected employees. A seafood kitchen with no health policy and documented handwashing failures is a direct transmission route.
The handwashing violations compound each other in a specific way. Inadequate facilities means the physical setup, soap, accessible sink, running water, did not meet code. Improper technique means that even where handwashing was attempted, it was done incorrectly. Studies show improper technique leaves significant pathogen loads on hands even after a wash attempt. At Bahama Fish on April 23, both failures existed at the same time.
The food contact surface citation and the multi-use utensil finding, an intermediate violation, point to the same underlying problem. Surfaces and tools that touch raw seafood and are not properly sanitized carry bacteria from one food item to the next, and from raw protein to ready-to-eat dishes. Bacterial biofilms on improperly cleaned utensils can form within 24 hours and resist standard cleaning attempts.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is specific to kitchens that use time rather than temperature to manage food safety, keeping track of how long food has sat out instead of keeping it refrigerated. When that system is not properly followed, food sits in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for longer than safe limits allow. Bacterial growth in that range accelerates rapidly.
The Longer Record
Bahama Fish has 44 inspections on record and 661 total violations documented across that history. April 23 was not an outlier.
The September 2025 inspection found 10 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate ones. The November 2024 inspection also produced 10 high-severity violations, alongside 5 intermediate citations. The restaurant has logged high-severity violations in every inspection on record going back through 2024.
In March 2024 alone, inspectors visited three times in nine days, on March 18, March 19, and March 27, finding 8, 7, and 4 high-severity violations respectively. That cluster of inspections in a single month suggests the facility was not correcting problems between visits at a pace that satisfied inspectors.
Despite 44 inspections and 661 documented violations, Bahama Fish has never been emergency-closed. The April 23 visit, with its 7 high-severity findings, continued that pattern.
Still Open
The violations documented on April 23 cut across nearly every foundational layer of food safety: management oversight, employee illness controls, hand hygiene infrastructure, hand hygiene practice, surface sanitation, time controls, and customer notification. Each one is categorized high-severity because each one represents a direct pathway to foodborne illness in customers.
State inspectors left the restaurant open.
Bahama Fish at 7202 SW 8th Street in Miami had 661 violations on record before April 23. It now has more.