DAVIE, FL. When state inspectors walked into CJ Blacks on West State Road 84 on July 13, they found a seafood restaurant serving shellfish with no records to trace where those shellfish came from, no way to know whether sick employees had been kept out of the kitchen, and no one in charge who was actively doing their job.
Six high-severity violations. The restaurant stayed open.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish violation is the most direct public safety concern. Inspectors cited inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning the restaurant could not document where its oysters, clams, or mussels came from. Shellfish are consumed raw or lightly cooked. If a customer got sick from a contaminated batch, there would be no paper trail to identify the source, no way to issue a recall, and no way to know how many other restaurants received the same product.
Alongside that, inspectors found no consumer advisory on the menu warning customers that raw or undercooked seafood carries elevated risk. Elderly diners, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system rely on that notice to make an informed choice. At CJ Blacks on July 13, no such notice existed.
The employee illness findings compounded the picture. Inspectors cited the restaurant for having no written employee health policy and for employees not reporting symptoms of illness. Those two violations together describe a kitchen with no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker away from food.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning employees were making the attempt but doing it wrong. That distinction matters: pathogens can survive on hands even after an inadequate wash.
Three intermediate violations rounded out the inspection. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned, a failure that allows bacterial biofilms to develop on surfaces that touch food every shift. Single-use items were being reused, a separate contamination pathway. Ventilation and lighting were also cited as inadequate.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is the specific pairing that precedes most multi-victim foodborne outbreaks. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads primarily through infected food workers who either don't know they're supposed to stay home or aren't required to report symptoms by any written policy. At CJ Blacks, inspectors found both gaps present at the same time.
The shellfish traceability failure adds a separate layer of risk that is specific to seafood restaurants. Oysters and clams filter large volumes of water and concentrate whatever pathogens are present in that water, including Vibrio bacteria and hepatitis A. The shell stock tagging system exists precisely because contamination events in shellfish are difficult to detect before people get sick. Without those records, the chain of accountability breaks at the restaurant's door.
The improper handwashing citation is easy to underestimate. An employee who washes hands incorrectly provides almost no barrier against transferring pathogens from raw shellfish to a plate, a utensil, or another food. Combined with improperly cleaned multi-use utensils and reused single-use items, the inspection describes a kitchen where multiple contamination pathways were simultaneously open.
The Longer Record
The July 13 inspection was not a new low for CJ Blacks. It was a continuation of a pattern that the facility's inspection history documents in detail.
The restaurant has 31 inspections on record and 262 total violations. In January 2026, inspectors visited three times in two days: a January 13 inspection produced 10 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate, a January 14 follow-up brought that down to 1 high and 2 intermediate, and a January 21 visit found 0 high and 2 intermediate violations. That sequence suggests the facility can address violations when pressed but does not sustain the corrections.
The same cycle appeared in September 2025. A September 2 inspection found 8 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate. A September 3 follow-up reduced that to 4 high and 0 intermediate. Improvement under scrutiny, followed by recurrence.
In March 2025, a March 19 inspection found 11 high-severity violations, the highest single-visit count in the recent record. A March 20 follow-up brought it to 4 high and 2 intermediate. The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history, despite repeated high-severity counts across multiple inspection cycles.
Open for Business
The day after the July 13 inspection, a follow-up visit found zero high-severity violations and one intermediate. The rapid improvement mirrors what the inspection history shows every time the state returns quickly.
What the record also shows is that the violations return. Six high-severity findings, including no shellfish traceability and no employee illness policy at a restaurant that serves raw seafood, were not enough to close CJ Blacks on July 13. It remained open that night.
