MIAMI, FL. Inspectors who walked into Burgers Smash & Fries at 47 NE 2nd Ave on July 29 found food not cooked to the required minimum temperature, a violation that means customers may have been served burgers or other items carrying live pathogens. The restaurant was not closed.
That single finding was one of eight high-severity violations documented that day, plus two intermediate violations. State records show the facility has accumulated 483 total violations across 41 inspections, including two prior emergency closures.
What Inspectors Found
The handwashing picture alone was alarming. Inspectors cited the restaurant on three separate handwashing violations in a single visit: employees were not washing their hands adequately, the technique used when washing was wrong, and the physical handwashing facilities themselves were inadequate.
That is not one problem. That is a facility where the infrastructure for hand hygiene, the training for hand hygiene, and the practice of hand hygiene all failed simultaneously on the same day.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils were also cited for improper cleaning. Those two violations, stacked against the handwashing failures, describe a kitchen where contamination had multiple unchecked pathways to the food.
No person in charge was present or performing duties. There was no written employee health policy. Employees were not reporting illness symptoms. The July 29 inspection documented a complete absence of the management layer that is supposed to catch every other problem before it reaches a customer.
What These Violations Mean
The undercooked food violation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at Burgers Smash & Fries on or before July 29. Salmonella survives in poultry below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Ground beef not cooked to 155 degrees can harbor E. coli O157:H7, a strain capable of causing kidney failure. When a cook does not hit required temperatures, those pathogens reach the plate alive.
The three handwashing violations compound that risk in a specific way. Improper handwashing technique, meaning an employee made an attempt but did it wrong, leaves pathogens on hands even after a wash. Combine that with inadequate facilities and a pattern of employees not washing at all, and the hands preparing food at this restaurant were a direct contamination pathway from surface to surface, from raw protein to finished burger.
The absence of an employee health policy and the failure to report illness symptoms are what public health officials call outbreak enablers. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million cases of illness in the United States annually, spreads most efficiently through food workers who are sick but have no policy requiring them to stay home or report symptoms to a manager. Without that policy at Burgers Smash & Fries, a sick employee had no formal obligation to disclose anything.
The person-in-charge violation ties all of it together. CDC data shows establishments without active managerial control have three times more critical violations than those with it. On July 29, inspectors found no one performing that function.
The Longer Record
Forty-one inspections. Four hundred and eighty-three total violations. Two prior emergency closures. That is the record Burgers Smash & Fries had accumulated before inspectors walked in on July 29.
The two closures came in 2017 and 2018. In June 2017, the restaurant was shut down for having no restrooms and reopened the same day. In May 2018, inspectors closed it for roach activity; it reopened the following day. Those closures are now eight years in the past, but they establish that this is not a facility encountering serious compliance problems for the first time.
The more recent pattern is harder to dismiss. In September 2024, inspectors found 8 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate, matching the count from July 29 almost exactly. The October 2024 visits found 2 high and 4 intermediate violations across two separate inspections within the same month. The February 2025 inspection found 3 high violations.
The March 2025 inspection found zero high or intermediate violations, which makes the July 29 findings more striking, not less. A facility that can pass a clean inspection and then produce 8 high-severity violations four months later is not a facility that fixed its underlying problems.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure threshold requires an inspector to determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. On July 29, the inspector at Burgers Smash & Fries documented undercooked food, a complete handwashing breakdown across three separate citations, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no manager in charge.
The restaurant was not closed.
State records do not indicate a follow-up inspection had been completed as of the date of this report. Burgers Smash & Fries at 47 NE 2nd Ave was open for business after the inspection concluded.
