MIAMI, FL. State inspectors who visited Candies Cabaret at 2663 NW 36th Street on April 21 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning no USDA or FDA inspection trail exists for what was being served to customers that day.
That was one of ten high-severity violations documented in a single inspection. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food-sourcing violation is the kind that investigators pay close attention to in outbreak investigations. When a customer gets sick and inspectors need to trace the source, food purchased outside licensed and inspected suppliers leaves no paper trail. There is no way to determine where it came from, who handled it, or what conditions it was stored under before it arrived.
Inspectors also cited the facility for food not cooked to required minimum temperatures. For poultry, that threshold is 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Below that, Salmonella survives. For ground beef, E. coli remains viable below 155 degrees. The inspection record does not specify which item was undercooked, but the citation stands as a high-severity finding.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. That is a direct poisoning risk, not a theoretical one. Inspectors also found food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment that touches food directly, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Food in poor condition or mislabeled was documented as well.
The handwashing picture was particularly detailed. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing by food employees and improper hand and arm washing technique as separate violations, meaning employees were observed either skipping handwashing entirely or performing it incorrectly. Both were logged as high-severity.
No person in charge was present or performing duties during the inspection. No written employee health policy existed.
Three intermediate violations accompanied the ten high-severity citations: improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, and improper sanitizing solution or procedures.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is a foundational food safety failure. Licensed suppliers are required to document the origin, handling, and cold chain of every product they sell. When a facility bypasses that system, there is no way to test for Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli after the fact. If a customer becomes ill, investigators cannot determine whether the contamination happened at a farm, a warehouse, or a delivery truck.
The cooking temperature violation compounds that risk. Undercooking is among the leading causes of foodborne illness in the United States. Paired with food from an unknown source, the failure to reach required internal temperatures means pathogens that may have entered the facility on unverified product had a second opportunity to survive to the plate.
The absence of an employee health policy is not a paperwork problem. Without a written policy, there is no mechanism to keep a sick employee out of the kitchen. Norovirus, which accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads through exactly this pathway: an infected food handler with no policy requiring them to stay home.
Improper sewage disposal, listed as an intermediate violation, carries a consequence that sounds abstract until it isn't. Raw sewage contains fecal coliform bacteria. When wastewater is not disposed of correctly, that contamination can reach food preparation surfaces, utensils, or food itself. At Candies Cabaret on April 21, that violation was occurring in the same facility where food contact surfaces were also not being properly sanitized.
The Longer Record
The April 21 inspection was not the first time Candies Cabaret drew serious citations. State records show 16 inspections on file for the facility, with 81 total violations across that history.
Candies Cabaret: Recent Inspection Pattern
The facility passed two consecutive inspections in the summer of 2024, with zero high-severity violations in both July and August of that year. What followed was a steady reversal. By November 2024, high-severity violations had returned. They appeared again in May 2025 and December 2025. The April 2026 inspection did not represent a new category of problem so much as an acceleration of an existing one: the same facility that had demonstrated it could pass inspections began accumulating serious citations at a pace it had not previously reached.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
On April 21, 2026, with ten high-severity violations on the inspector's clipboard, including food from unknown sources, undercooked food, and toxic chemicals stored near the food supply, Candies Cabaret remained open for business.