FORT LAUDERDALE, FL. State inspectors visited Belle Cuisine Caribbean Restaurant at 1952 NW 9 Ave on June 8, 2026, and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means some of what was being served to customers that day had bypassed every federal safety inspection designed to catch Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli before it reaches a plate.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The full list from June 8 runs ten violations deep, six of them high severity. Beyond the unapproved food sourcing, inspectors cited food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated, meaning something on the premises had already degraded to a point that warranted a high-priority flag.
Two separate handwashing violations were documented on the same visit. Inspectors cited employees for inadequate handwashing and for using improper hand and arm washing technique, a distinction that matters: the second violation means workers were going through the motions of washing without actually removing pathogens.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy, no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked menu items, improperly disposed sewage or wastewater, multi-use utensils that had not been properly cleaned, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The food-sourcing violation is the one with the longest reach. When a restaurant purchases from unapproved or unknown suppliers, there is no chain of custody. If a customer gets sick, investigators cannot trace the food back to a farm, a distributor, or a processing facility. The standard inspection system that screens for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli was never applied to whatever came through that door.
The handwashing violations compound that risk directly. Improper handwashing is the single most common pathway for Norovirus transmission in restaurant settings, and the technique violation documented here means that even when employees approached a sink, the wash was insufficient to remove contaminants. Two separate citations for handwashing failures at one facility, on one visit, describe a kitchen where contamination can move from surfaces to food to customers with very little friction.
The absence of an employee health policy at Belle Cuisine means there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker out of the kitchen. Norovirus can survive on surfaces for days and spreads through contact with contaminated food or utensils. A single infected employee working without a health policy in place is enough to trigger an outbreak.
The sewage disposal violation adds a separate contamination route. Improperly handled wastewater carries fecal bacteria, and when that waste is not correctly contained and removed, it creates a pathway for that contamination to reach food preparation surfaces.
The Longer Record
Belle Cuisine has 38 inspections on record and 227 total violations documented across its history. That is not the profile of a restaurant encountering its first rough stretch.
The pattern in recent visits is consistent. On March 31, 2026, inspectors found three high-severity and three intermediate violations. On April 1, a follow-up visit found six high and four intermediate, the same counts as June 8. A callback inspection the same day cleared the facility. Then, in June, the six high-severity violations returned.
The restaurant was emergency-closed once before, on July 19, 2021, after inspectors found roach and rodent activity. It was allowed to reopen the following day. That closure is now five years in the rearview, but the violation counts since then have not trended toward resolution.
The October 2025 visit produced three high-severity citations. February 2025 produced four high and three intermediate. The food-sourcing violation documented in June 2026 did not appear for the first time on a clean record.
Open for Business
A follow-up inspection on June 9, the day after the ten-violation visit, found one high-severity and one intermediate violation remaining. The restaurant was not closed at any point following the June 8 inspection.
State inspectors documented unapproved food sources, two handwashing failures, adulterated food, no health policy for sick employees, and improperly disposed sewage at a restaurant that had accumulated 227 violations over 38 prior inspections, and the doors stayed open.