LAKE WORTH BEACH, FL. Food at Best Taste of Mexico on South Dixie Highway was not being cooked to the minimum required temperature when state inspectors arrived on August 13, a violation that means live pathogens, including Salmonella in poultry, could have reached customers' plates.
That was one of ten high-severity violations documented in a single visit to the Lake Worth Beach restaurant. The facility remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The inspection record lists ten separate high-severity citations and three intermediate ones. Beyond undercooked food, inspectors cited toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, a finding that carries risk of acute poisoning through contamination or mislabeling.
Inspectors also found that no person in charge was present or performing duties. That single condition matters because it tends to predict what follows: food handling shortcuts, missed temperature checks, and the kind of cascading failures visible in the rest of this inspection report.
Employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, and the restaurant had no written employee health policy. Inspectors additionally cited improper handwashing technique and inadequate handwashing facilities, meaning the physical infrastructure to wash hands correctly was itself deficient.
The restaurant was also cited for inadequate shell stock identification and records. Best Taste of Mexico serves shellfish, which are consumed raw or lightly cooked and carry elevated risk of Vibrio and norovirus. Without proper tagging records, there is no way to trace the source of a shellfish lot if customers become ill.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and the facility was cited for failing to use time correctly as a public health control, a method that requires strict tracking of how long food sits in the temperature danger zone between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Three intermediate violations covered multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooked food is not a paperwork problem. Salmonella survives in poultry held below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a single serving can cause days of illness. Combined with improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, the contamination pathway from raw protein to a finished plate becomes direct.
The employee illness violations are particularly acute. Norovirus, which causes approximately 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, spreads through food workers who prepare meals while symptomatic. A written health policy and a manager actively enforcing it are the primary barriers to that transmission route. Inspectors found neither in place at Best Taste of Mexico on August 13.
Toxic chemicals stored near food represent a different category of risk entirely. Unlike bacterial contamination, which typically causes illness hours or days after exposure, chemical poisoning from a mislabeled or improperly stored cleaning agent can cause acute harm with no warning.
The shell stock traceability failure compounds everything else. If a customer became ill after eating shellfish at this restaurant, investigators would have no reliable records to determine where that shellfish came from or whether other consumers were at risk from the same lot.
The Longer Record
The August 13 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Best Taste of Mexico has accumulated 101 violations across 25 inspections on file, and the restaurant was emergency-closed once before, in July 2021, for rodent activity. It reopened the following day.
The pattern of high-severity violations predates 2026. An inspection in September 2023 produced five high-severity and two intermediate violations. A February 2026 inspection, six months before this one, found three high-severity and one intermediate violation. The restaurant passed cleanly in February 2024 and September 2021, which makes the August 2026 count of ten high-severity citations a new recorded high.
What the history shows is a facility that has demonstrated it can pass an inspection, which makes the August 2026 findings harder to explain as a capacity problem. Five of the last seven inspections on record produced high-severity violations. The single prior emergency closure came after inspectors found rodent activity, a threshold the state treats as an immediate public health threat.
The Facility Remained Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. The state did not make that determination on August 13 at Best Taste of Mexico, despite ten high-severity violations that included undercooked food, toxic chemicals near food, no active management, and no mechanism to trace shellfish to its source.
The restaurant at 1108 S. Dixie Highway in Lake Worth Beach was still operating when inspectors left.
