MIAMI, FL. Inspectors visiting Bodega Taqueria y Tequila on Main Highway on August 18 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no government inspector ever checked that food for Listeria, Salmonella, or any other pathogen before it reached the kitchen. The restaurant was not closed.
The August 18 inspection logged 8 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations. It was the second-highest single-day tally in the restaurant's inspection history, behind only a nine-high-violation inspection in April 2024.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation sits at the top of the list for a specific reason. When food enters a kitchen through channels that bypass USDA or FDA inspection, there is no paper trail. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no way to trace the ingredient back to a farm, processor, or distributor.
Alongside that, inspectors cited food not cooked to the required minimum temperature. Undercooking is how pathogens survive. Salmonella in poultry lives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a single serving can cause illness severe enough to require hospitalization.
The food contact surfaces violation compounds both of those findings. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that are not properly sanitized transfer bacteria from one ingredient to the next, meaning a pathogen introduced through an unapproved source or undercooked protein can spread to food that never touched the original contaminated item.
The no-consumer-advisory violation matters specifically for Bodega's menu. A taqueria that serves raw or undercooked proteins is required to post a written notice so that pregnant customers, elderly diners, and people with compromised immune systems can make an informed choice. No such notice was present.
The Management Problem
The person-in-charge violation is not a paperwork issue. CDC data cited in the inspection record shows establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged supervision. Every other violation on this list is the kind that an attentive manager on the floor is supposed to catch and correct before an inspector arrives.
The employee illness violations sharpen that picture. Inspectors cited both the absence of a written employee health policy and a separate violation for employees not reporting illness symptoms. Those are two distinct failures, and together they describe a kitchen where a worker with Norovirus has no formal obligation to stay home and no written procedure telling them to do so.
Norovirus causes an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are among its most efficient vectors.
What These Violations Mean
For anyone who ate at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila around August 18, the combination of violations on this inspection represents several overlapping exposure risks arriving from different directions.
The unapproved food source means ingredients may have entered the kitchen without ever being tested for Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli. The undercooked food violation means that even ingredients that started safe may not have been made safe through cooking. The improperly cleaned food contact surfaces mean bacteria could have moved from one dish to another throughout the day.
Layered on top of that is the employee illness problem. A worker who is sick, has no written policy requiring them to report symptoms, and is washing their hands improperly, is a direct transmission route for Norovirus or Hepatitis A to every plate that leaves the kitchen. These are not theoretical risks. They are the documented preconditions for multi-victim outbreaks.
Customers who are pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, or feeding young children face the highest exposure from this specific combination of violations.
The Longer Record
The August 18 inspection was the twelfth on record for Bodega Taqueria y Tequila. Across those 12 inspections, the restaurant has accumulated 91 total violations. It has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern in the prior inspection data is consistent and long-running. Of the eight inspections logged before August 18, six included high-severity violations. The April 2024 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The February 2026 inspection, six months before this one, produced six high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The only clean inspection in the record, zero high and zero intermediate, came in June 2024, sandwiched between two inspections with six high-severity violations each.
That single clean inspection is the outlier. Every other inspection in the record shows at least one high-severity violation, and most show several. The August 18 findings are not a sudden decline. They are consistent with what inspectors have documented at this address across more than two years.
Bodega Taqueria y Tequila remained open after the August 18 inspection.
