HOMESTEAD, FL. Food workers at a Homestead Mexican restaurant were not reporting illness symptoms, were washing their hands improperly, and had no written health policy in place — all on the same day, all documented by a state inspector, and none of it enough to shut the place down.
The July 13 inspection of Casita Tejas Mexican Restaurant at 27 N Krome Ave produced six high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation left the restaurant open.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector cited the restaurant for having no employee health policy and no system for workers to report symptoms of illness. Those two violations appear on the same inspection report as the finding that employees were, in fact, not reporting illness symptoms.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. The inspector also noted improper handwashing technique, meaning workers were going through the motion of washing their hands without removing pathogens effectively.
The restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked food items. Customers who ordered dishes that could be served undercooked had no way of knowing that from the menu. The person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties when inspectors arrived.
Two intermediate violations rounded out the report: cooling equipment that could not maintain required temperatures, and inadequate ventilation and lighting in the kitchen.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no health policy, no illness reporting, and employees actively not reporting symptoms is not three separate problems. It is one systemic failure with a direct path to a customer getting sick.
Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States, spreads through exactly this route. A sick worker with no obligation to report symptoms, no policy telling them to stay home, and no manager present to enforce any standard, handles food. The customer who ordered that food has no idea. CDC data links the absence of active managerial control to three times more critical violations at food service establishments.
Improper handwashing compounds the risk. Even when workers made an effort to wash their hands, inspectors found the technique inadequate, meaning pathogens remained on their hands after the attempt. Pair that with food contact surfaces that were not properly sanitized, and the transfer route from worker to surface to food to customer is essentially unobstructed.
The missing consumer advisory is a narrower but still serious gap. Elderly diners, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems face significantly higher risk from undercooked proteins. Without a menu advisory, those customers cannot make an informed choice about what they order at Casita Tejas.
The Longer Record
July 13 was not a bad day at an otherwise clean restaurant. State records show 25 inspections on file for Casita Tejas, with 260 total violations documented across that history.
The most recent inspections tell a consistent story. In January 2026, inspectors cited the restaurant for seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. In September 2025, five high-severity and three intermediate. In September 2024, a two-day stretch produced seven high-severity violations on one day and four on the next.
The only inspection in recent years that came back clean was July 23, 2023, which showed zero high-severity violations and one intermediate. The very next day, July 24, 2023, inspectors returned and documented nine high-severity violations and two intermediate ones.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. In eight inspections stretching back to 2023, high-severity violations appeared in seven of them. The categories that keep appearing, management failures, illness reporting gaps, food handling deficiencies, are the same categories flagged again on July 13.
Still Open
Two hundred and sixty violations across 25 inspections is the record that preceded the July 13 visit. Six high-severity violations, including workers not reporting illness symptoms and no one in charge to enforce any standard, is what the inspector found when they got there.
Casita Tejas Mexican Restaurant at 27 N Krome Ave in Homestead remained open after the inspection was complete.
