MIAMI, FL. Inspectors visiting Caffe Portofino at 13615 S. Dixie Highway on September 14, 2026 found shellfish on the premises with no identification tags or harvest records, meaning that if a customer got sick, there would be no way to trace where those oysters, clams, or mussels came from.
That was one of nine high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation stands apart. When a restaurant obtains food from an unapproved or unknown source, that food bypasses the USDA and FDA inspection chain entirely. There is no supplier record, no lot number, no recall mechanism.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. That is a direct contamination pathway, not a paperwork problem.
The restaurant also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items. Caffe Portofino is an Italian café, and shellfish, raw preparations, and lightly cooked proteins are common on such menus. Without that advisory, elderly diners, pregnant women, and immunocompromised customers had no warning.
Inspectors also cited improper use of time as a public health control. When a restaurant opts to use time rather than temperature to keep food safe, strict written procedures and tracking are required. Without them, food sits in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, with no reliable record of how long it has been there.
The intermediate violations compounded the picture. Sewage or wastewater was not being disposed of properly. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned. Sanitizing solutions or procedures were inadequate. Ventilation and lighting were cited as insufficient. Toilet facilities were found inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
The shellfish traceability failure is the one that public health officials call a "silent outbreak" risk. Oysters, clams, and mussels are often eaten raw or lightly cooked, and they filter-feed contaminants directly from the water they live in. When harvest tags are missing, there is no way to link a sick customer to a contaminated harvest lot, and no way to pull product from other restaurants that received the same batch.
The absence of an employee health policy is a different kind of systemic failure. Without a written policy, there is no mechanism requiring a worker with norovirus symptoms to stay home or report their illness to management. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, and food workers are one of its primary transmission routes.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, combined with inadequate sanitizing procedures and dirty multi-use utensils, means that bacteria transferred from raw proteins to a cutting board can survive long enough to reach the next dish prepared on that surface. The sewage disposal violation adds a fecal contamination pathway that touches the entire facility.
The person in charge was cited as not present or not performing duties. CDC data links the absence of active managerial control directly to higher rates of critical violations. When no one is actively supervising, the other failures on this list become more likely, not less.
The Longer Record
Caffe Portofino: Recent Inspection History
The September 2026 inspection was not an outlier. It was the third time in less than a year that inspectors documented exactly nine high-severity violations in a single visit. The January 2026 inspection produced the same count. So did the October 2025 inspection.
Going back further, the January 15, 2025 visit produced ten high-severity violations, the highest single-day count in the recent record. The following day, January 16, there were six more high-severity violations. Two inspections in two consecutive days.
Across 24 inspections on record, Caffe Portofino has accumulated 261 total violations. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The restaurant was open for business after the September 14 inspection. It had nine high-severity violations on the books, including food from an unapproved source and toxic chemicals improperly stored near food, and the state did not order it shut.
